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diff --git a/28268.txt b/28268.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7b10002 --- /dev/null +++ b/28268.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6316 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Countess of Albany, by Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee) + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Countess of Albany + +Author: Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee) + +Release Date: March 7, 2009 [EBook #28268] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY *** + + + + +Produced by Delphine Lettau and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: ALFIERI AND THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY + +_From the original portrait in the possession of the Marchesa A. + Alfieri de Sostegno_] + + + +THE COUNTESS +OF ALBANY + + +BY +VERNON LEE + +WITH PORTRAITS + + + + +LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD +NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMX + +SECOND EDITION + +Printed by BALLANTYNE AND CO. LIMITED +Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London + + + + +TO THE MEMORY OF MY FRIEND + + +MADAME JOHN MEYER, + + +I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME, +SO OFTEN AND SO LATELY TALKED OVER TOGETHER, +IN GRATEFUL AND AFFECTIONATE REGRET. + + + + +PREFACE + + +In preparing this volume on the Countess of Albany (which I consider as +a kind of completion of my previous studies of eighteenth-century +Italy), I have availed myself largely of Baron Alfred von Reumont's +large work _Die Graefin von Albany_ (published in 1862); and of the +monograph, itself partially founded on the foregoing, of M. St. Rene +Taillandier, entitled _La Comtesse d'Albany_, published in Paris in +1862. Baron von Reumont's two volumes, written twenty years ago and when +the generation which had come into personal contact with the Countess of +Albany had not yet entirely died out; and M. St. Rene Taillandier's +volume, which embodied the result of his researches into the archives of +the Musee Fabre at Montpellier; might naturally be expected to have +exhausted all the information obtainable about the subject of their and +my studies. This has proved to be the case very much less than might +have been anticipated. The publication, by Jacopo Bernardi and Carlo +Milanesi, of a number of letters of Alfieri to Sienese friends, has +afforded me an insight into Alfieri's character and his relations with +the Countess of Albany such as was unattainable to Baron von Reumont and +to M. St. Rene Taillandier. The examination, by myself and my friend +Signor Mario Pratesi, of several hundreds of MS. letters of the Countess +of Albany existing in public and private archives at Siena and at +Milan, has added an important amount of what I may call psychological +detail, overlooked by Baron von Reumont and unguessed by M. St. Rene +Taillandier. I have, therefore, I trust, been able to reconstruct the +Countess of Albany's spiritual likeness during the period--that of her +early connection with Alfieri--which my predecessors have been satisfied +to despatch in comparatively few pages, counterbalancing the thinness of +this portion of their biographies by a degree of detail concerning the +Countess's latter years, and the friends with whom she then corresponded, +which, however interesting, cannot be considered as vital to the real +subject of their works. + +Besides the volumes of Baron von Reumont and M. St. Rene Taillandier, I +have depended mainly upon Alfieri's autobiography, edited by Professor +Teza, and supplemented by Bernardi's and Milanesi's _Lettere di Vittorio +Alfieri_, published by Le Monnier in 1862. Among English books that I +have put under contribution, I may mention Klose's _Memoirs of Prince +Charles Edward Stuart_ (Colburn, 1845), Ewald's _Life and Times of +Prince Charles Stuart_ (Chapman and Hall, 1875), and Sir Horace Mann's +_Letters to Walpole_, edited by Dr. Doran. A review, variously +attributed to Lockhart and to Dennistoun, in the _Quarterly_ for 1847, +has been all the more useful to me as I have been unable to procure, +writing in Italy, the _Tales of the Century_, of which that paper gives +a masterly account. + +For various details I must refer to Charles Dutens' _Memoires d'un +Voyageur qui se repose_ (Paris, 1806); to Silvagni's _La Corte e la +Societa Romana nel secolo XVIII._; to Foscolo's _Correspondence_, Gino +Capponi's _Ricordi_ and those of d'Azeglio; to Giordani's works and +Benassu Montanari's _Life of Ippolito Pindemonti_, besides the books +quoted by Baron Reumont; and for what I may call the general pervading +historical colouring (if indeed I have succeeded in giving any) of the +background against which I have tried to sketch the Countess of Albany, +Charles Edward and Alfieri, I can only refer generally to what is +now a vague mass of detail accumulated by myself during the years of +preparation for my _Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy_. + +My debt to the kindness of persons who have put unpublished matter at my +disposal, or helped me to collect various information, is a large one. +In the first category, I wish to express my best thanks to the Director +of the Public Library at Siena; to Cavaliere Guiseppe Porri, a great +collector of autographs, in the same city; to the Countess Baldelli and +Cavaliere Emilio Santarelli of Florence, who possess some most curious +portraits and other relics of the Countess of Albany, Prince Charles +Edward, and Alfieri; and also to my friend Count Pierre Boutourline, +whose grandfather and great-aunt were among Madame d'Albany's friends. +Among those who have kindly given me the benefit of their advice and +assistance, I must mention foremost my friend Signor Mario Pratesi, the +eminent novelist; and next to him the learned Director of the State +Archives of Florence, Cavaliere Gaetano Milanese, and Doctor Guido +Biagi, of the Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuel of Rome, without whose +kindness my work would have been quite impossible. + +Florence, + March 15, 1884. + + + + +CONTENTS. + +CHAPTER I.--THE BRIDE 1 +CHAPTER II.--THE BRIDEGROOM 14 +CHAPTER III.--REGINA APOSTOLORUM 25 +CHAPTER IV.--THE HEIR 33 +CHAPTER V.--FLORENCE 46 +CHAPTER VI.--ALFIERI 57 +CHAPTER VII.--THE CAVALIERE SERVENTE 72 +CHAPTER VIII.--THE ESCAPE 80 +CHAPTER IX.--ROME 91 +CHAPTER X--ANTIGONE 102 +CHAPTER XI.--SEPARATION 120 +CHAPTER XII.--COLMAR 134 +CHAPTER XIII.--RUE DE BOURGOYNE 142 +CHAPTER XIV.--BEFORE THE STORM 155 +CHAPTER XV.--ENGLAND 166 +CHAPTER XVI.--THE MISOGALLO 176 +CHAPTER XVII.--CASA GIANFIGLIAZZI 190 +CHAPTER XVIII.--FABRE 199 +CHAPTER XIX.--THE SALON OF THE COUNTESS 207 +CHAPTER XX.--SANTA CROCE 220 + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + +ALFIERI AND THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY + + _From the original portrait in the possession of the Marchesa A. + Alfieri de Sostegno_ + + +CHARLES EDWARD STUART + + _From a pastel, painter unknown, once in the possession of the heir + of the Countess of Albany's heir Fabre. Now in the possession of + Mrs. Horace Walpole, of Heckfield Place, Winchfield, Hants_ + + +LOUISE, COUNTESS OF ALBANY + + _From a pastel once in the possession of the heirs of Fabre, now + in the possession of Mrs. Horace Walpole, of Heckfield Place, + Winchfield, Hants._ + + + + + +THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +THE BRIDE. + + +On the Wednesday or Thursday of Holy Week of the year 1772 the inhabitants +of the squalid and dilapidated little mountain towns between Ancona and +Loreto were thrown into great excitement by the passage of a travelling +equipage, doubtless followed by two or three dependent chaises, of more +than usual magnificence. + +The people of those parts have little to do now-a-days, and must have +had still less during the Pontificate of His Holiness Pope Clement XIV.; +and we can imagine how all the windows of the unplastered houses, all +the black and oozy doorways, must have been lined with heads of women +and children; how the principal square of each town, where the horses +were changed, must have been crowded with inquisitive townsfolk and +peasants, whispering, as they hung about the carriages, that the great +traveller was the young Queen of England going to meet her bridegroom; +a thing to be remembered in such world-forgotten places as these, and +which must have furnished the subject of conversation for months and +years, till that Queen of England and her bridegroom had become part +and parcel of the tales of the "Three Golden Oranges," of the "King of +Portugal's Cowherd," of the "Wonderful Little Blue Bird," and such-like +stories in the minds of the children of those Apennine cities. The Queen +of England going to meet her bridegroom at the Holy House of Loreto. The +notion, even to us, does savour strangely of the fairy tale. + +What were, meanwhile, the thoughts of the beautiful little fairy +princess, with laughing dark eyes and shining golden hair, and brilliant +fair skin, more brilliant for the mysterious patches of rouge upon +the cheeks, and vermilion upon the lips, whom the more audacious or +fortunate of the townsfolk caught a glimpse of seated in her gorgeous +travelling dress (for the eighteenth century was still in its stage of +pre-revolutionary brocade and gold lace and powder and spangles) behind +the curtains of the coach? Louise, Princess of Stolberg-Gedern, and +ex-Canoness of Mons, was, if we may judge by the crayon portrait and the +miniature done about that time, much more of a child than most women of +nineteen. A clever and accomplished young lady, but, one would say, +with, as yet, more intelligence and acquired pretty little habits and +ideas than character; a childish woman of the world, a bright, light +handful of thistle-bloom. And thus, besides the confusion, the unreality +due to precipitation of events and change of scene, the sense that she +had (how long ago--days, weeks, or years? in such a state time becomes a +great muddle and mystery) been actually married by proxy, that she had +come the whole way from Paris, through Venice and across the sea, +besides being in this dream-like, phantasmagoric condition, which must +have made all things seem light--it is probable that the young lady had +scarcely sufficient consciousness of herself as a grown-up, independent, +independently feeling and thinking creature, to feel or think very +strongly over her situation. It was the regular thing for girls of +Louise of Stolberg's rank to be put through a certain amount of rather +vague convent education, as she had been at Mons; to be put through a +certain amount of balls and parties; to be put through the formality of +betrothal and marriage; all this was the half-conscious dream--then +would come the great waking up. And Louise of Stolberg was, most likely, +in a state of feeling like that which comes to us with the earliest +light through the blinds: pleasant, or unpleasant? We know not which; +still drowsing, dreaming, but yet strongly conscious that in a moment we +shall be awake to reality. + +There was, nevertheless, in the position of this girl something which, +even in these circumstances, must have compelled her to think, or, at +all events, to meditate, however confusedly, upon the present and the +future. If she had in her the smallest spark of imagination she must +have felt, to an acute degree, the sort of continuous surprise, recurring +like the tick of a clock, which haunts us sometimes with the fact that +it really does just happen to be ourselves to whom some curious lot, +some rare combination of the numbers in life's lottery, has come. For +the man whom she was going to marry--nay, to whom, in a sense, she was +married already--the unknown whom she would see for the first time that +evening, was not the mere typical bridegroom, the mere man of rank and +fortune, to whom, whatever his particular individual shape and name, the +daughter of a high-born but impoverished house had known herself, since +her childhood, to be devoted. + +Louise Maximilienne Caroline Emanuele, daughter of the late Prince +Gustavus Adolphus of Stolberg-Gedern, Prince of the Empire, who had +died, a Colonel of Maria Theresa, in the battle of Leuthen; and of +Elisabeth Philippine, Countess of Horn, born at Mons in Hainaut, the +20th September 1752, educated there in a convent, and subsequently +admitted to the half-ecclesiastic, half-worldly dignity of Canoness of +Ste. Wandru in that town: Louise, Princess of Stolberg, now in her +twentieth year, had been betrothed, and, a few weeks ago, married by +proxy in Paris to Charles Edward Stuart, known to history as the Younger +Pretender, to popular imagination as Bonnie Prince Charlie, and to +society in the second half of the eighteenth century as the Count of +Albany. The match had been made up hurriedly--most probably without +consulting, or dreaming of consulting, the girl--by her mother, the +dowager Princess Stolberg, and the Duke of Fitz-James, Charles Edward's +cousin. The French Minister, Duc d'Aiguillon, in one of those fits of +preparing Charles Edward as a weapon against England, which had more +than once cost the Pretender so much bitterness, and the Court of +Versailles so much brazenly endured shame, had intimated to the Count of +Albany that he had better take unto himself a wife. Charles Edward had +more than once refused; this time he accepted, and his cousin Fitz-James +looked around for a possible future Queen of England. Now it happened +that the eldest son of Fitz-James, the Marquis of Jamaica and Duke of +Berwick, had just married Caroline, the second daughter of the widow of +Prince Gustavus Adolphus of Stolberg-Gedern; so that the choice +naturally fell upon this lady's elder sister, Louise of Stolberg, the +young Canoness of Ste. Wandru of Mons. + +The alliance, short of royal birth, was, in the matter of dignity, all +that could be wished; the Stolbergs were one of the most illustrious +families of the Holy Roman Empire, in whose service they had discharged +many high offices; the Horns, on the other hand, were among the most +brilliant of the Flemish aristocracy, allied to the Gonzagas of Mantua, +the Colonna, Orsinis, the Medina Celis, Croys, Lignes, Hohenzollerns, +and the house of Lorraine, reigning or quasi-reigning families; and +Louise of Stolberg's mother was, moreover, on the maternal side, the +grand-daughter of the Earl of Elgin and Ailesbury, a Bruce, and a +staunch follower of King James II. Such had been the inducements in the +eyes of the Duke of Fitz-James; and therefore in the eyes of Charles +Edward, for whom he was commissioned to select a wife. The inducements +to the Princess of Stolberg had been even greater. Foremost among them +was probably the mere desire of ridding herself, poor and living as she +was on the charity of the Empress-Queen, of another of the four girls +with whom she had been left a widow at twenty-five. It had been a great +blessing to get the two eldest girls, Louise and Caroline, educated, +housed for a time, and momentarily settled in the world by their +admission to the rich and noble chapter of Ste. Wandru: it must have +been a great blessing to see the second girl married to the son of +Fitz-James; it would be a still greater one to get Louise safely off her +hands, now that the third and fourth daughters required to be thought +of. So far for the desirability of any marriage. This particular +marriage with Prince Charles Edward was, moreover, such as to tempt the +vanity and ambition of a lady like the widowed Princess of Stolberg, +conscious of her high rank, and conscious, perhaps painfully conscious +of the difficulty of living up to its requirements. The Count of +Albany's grandfather had been King of England; his father, the Pretender +James, had lived with royal state in his exile at Rome, recognised as +reigning Sovereign by the Pope, and even, every now and then, by France +and Spain. No Government had recognised Charles Edward as King of +England; but, on the other hand, Charles Edward had virtually been King +of Scotland during the '45; he had been promised the help of France to +restore him to his rights; and although that help had never been +satisfactorily given in the past, who could tell whether it might +not be given at any moment in the future? The ups and downs of politics +brought all sorts of unexpected necessities; and why should the French +Government, which had ignominiously kidnapped and bundled off Charles +Edward in 1748, have sent for him again only a year ago, have urged him +to marry, unless it had some scheme for reinstating him in England? The +Duke of Fitz-James had doubtless urged these considerations; he had not +laid much weight on the fact that Charles Edward was thirty-two years +older than his proposed wife; still less is it probable that he had bade +the Princess of Stolberg consider that his royal kinsman was said to be +neither of very good health, nor of very agreeable disposition, nor of +very temperate habits; or, if such ideas were presented to the Princess +Stolberg, she put them behind her. Be it as it may, these were matters +for the judicious consideration of a mother; not, certainly, for the +thoughts of a daughter. The judicious mother decided that such a match +was a good one; perhaps, in her heart, she was even overwhelmed by the +glory which this daughter of hers was permitted by Heaven to add to all +the glories of the illustrious Stolbergs and Horns. Anyhow, she accepted +eagerly; so eagerly as to forget both gratitude and prudence: for so far +from consulting her benefactress, Maria Theresa, about the advisability +of this marriage, or asking her sovereign permission for a step +which might draw upon the Empress-Queen some disagreeable diplomatic +correspondence with England, the Princess of Stolberg kept the matter +close, and did not even announce the marriage to the Court of Vienna; +yet she must have foreseen what occurred, namely, that Maria Theresa, +mortified not merely in her dignity as a sovereign, but also, and +perhaps more, in her ruling passion of benevolent meddlesomeness, would +suspend the pension which formed a large portion of the Princess's +income, and compel her to the abject apology before restoring it. The +marriage with Charles Edward Stuart was worth all that! + +Louise of Stolberg was probably well aware of the extreme glory of the +marriage for which she had been reserved. The Fitz-Jameses, in virtue of +their illegitimate descent from James II., considered themselves and +were considered as a sort of Princes of the Blood; and as such they +doubtless impressed Louise with a great notion of the glory of the +Stuarts, and the absolute legitimacy of their claims. On his marriage +Charles Edward assumed the title, and attempted to assume the position, +of King of England; so his bride must have considered herself as the +wife not merely of the Count of Albany, but of Charles III., King of +Great Britain, France, and Ireland. She was going to be a _Queen_! We +must try, we democratic creatures of a time when kings and queens may +perfectly be adventurers and adventuresses, to put ourselves in the +place of this young lady of a century ago, brought up as a dignitary +of a chapter into which admission depended entirely upon the number +and quality of quarterings of the candidate's escutcheon, under a +superior--the Abbess of Ste. Wandru--who was the sister of the late +Emperor Francis, the sister-in-law of Maria Theresa; we must try and +conceive an institution something between a school, a sisterhood, and a +club, in which the ruling idea, the source of all dignity, jealousy, +envy, and triumph, was greatness of birth and connection; we must try +and do this in order to understand what, to Louise of Stolberg, was the +full value of the fact of becoming the wife of Charles Edward Stuart. +One hundred and twelve years ago, and seventeen years before the great +revolution which yawns, an almost impassable gulf, between us and the +men and women of the past, a woman, a girl of nineteen, and a Canoness +of Ste. Wandru of Mons, need have been of no base temper if, on the +eve of such a wedding as this one, her mind had been full of only one +idea: the idea, monotonous and drowningly loud like some big cathedral +bell, "I shall be a Queen." But if Louise of Stolberg was, as is most +probable, in some such a state of vague exultation, we must remember +also that there may well have entered into such exultation an element +with which even we, and even the most austerely or snobbishly democratic +among us, might fully have sympathised. Her mother, her sister, her +brother-in-law, and the old Duke of Fitz-James, who had made up her +marriage and married her by proxy, and every other person who had +approached her during the last month, must have been filling the mind of +Louise of Stolberg with tales of the '45 and of the heroism of Prince +Charlie. And her mind, which, as afterwards appeared, was romantic, +fascinated by eccentricity and genius, may easily have become enamoured +of the bridegroom who awaited her, the last of so brilliant and ill-fated +a race, the hero of Gladsmuir and Falkirk, at whose approach the +Londoners had shut their shops in terror, and the Hanoverian usurper +ordered his yacht to lie ready moored at the Tower steps; the more than +royal young man whom (as the Jacobites doubtless told her) only the +foolish and traitorous obstinacy of his followers had prevented from +reinstating his father on the throne of England. Historical figures, +especially those of a heroic sort, remain pictured in men's minds at +their moment of glory; and this was the case particularly with the Young +Pretender, who had disappeared into well-nigh complete mystery after his +wonderful exploits and hairbreadth escapes of the '45; so that in the +eyes of Louise of Stolberg the man she was about to marry appeared most +probably but little changed from the brilliant youth who had marched on +foot at the head of his army towards London, who had held court at +Holyrood and roamed in disguise about the Hebrides. + +Still, it is difficult to imagine that as the hours of meeting drew +nearer, the little Princess, as her travelling carriage toiled up the +Apennine valleys, did not feel some terror of the future and the +unknown. The spring comes late to those regions; in the middle of April +the blackthorn is scarcely budding on the rocks, the violets are still +plentiful underneath the leafless roadside hedges; scarcely a faint +yellow, more like autumn that spring, is beginning to tinge the scraggy +outlines of the poplars, which rise in spectral regiments out of the +river beds. Wherever the valley widens, or the road gains some hill-crest, +a huge peak white with newly-fallen snow confronts you, closes in the +view, bringing bleakness and bitterness curiously home to the feelings. +These valleys, torrent-tracks between the steep rocks of livid basalt or +bright red sandstone, bare as a bone or thinly clothed with ilex and +juniper scrub, are inexpressibly lonely and sad, especially at this time +of year. You feel imprisoned among the rocks in a sort of catacomb open +to the sky, where the shadows gather in the early afternoon, and only +the light on the snow-peaks and on the high-sailing clouds tells you +that the sun is still in the heavens. Villages there seem none; and you +may drive for an hour without meeting more than a stray peasant cutting +scrub or quarrying gravel on the hill-side, a train of mules carrying +charcoal or faggots; the towns are far between, bleak, black, filthy, +and such as only to make you feel all the more poignantly the utter +desolateness of these mountains. No sadder way of entering Italy can +well be imagined than landing at Ancona and crossing through the +Apennines to Rome in the early spring. To a girl accustomed to the fat +flatness of Flanders, to the market-bustle of a Flemish provincial town, +this journey must have been overwhelmingly dreary and dismal. During +those long hours dragging up these Apennine valleys, did a shadow fall +across the mind of the pretty, fair-haired, brilliant-complexioned +little Canoness of Mons, a shadow like the cold melancholy blue which +filled the valleys between the sun-smitten peaks? And did it ever occur +to her, as the horses were changed in the little post-towns, that it was +in honour of Holy Week that the savage-looking bearded men, the big, +brawny, madonna-like women had got on their best clothes? Did it strike +her that the unplastered church-fronts were draped with black, the +streets strewn with laurel and box, as for a funeral, that the bells +were silent in their towers? Perhaps not; and yet when, a few years +later, the Countess of Albany was already wont to say that her married +life had been just such as befitted a woman who had gone to the altar on +Good Friday, she must have remembered, and the remembrance must have +seemed fraught with ill omen, that last day of her girlhood, travelling +through the black deserted valleys of the March, through the +world-forgotten mountain-towns with their hushed bells and black-draped +churches and funereally strewn streets. + +At Loreto--where, as a good Catholic, the Princess Louise of Stolberg +doubtless prayed for a blessing on her marriage, in the great sanctuary +which encloses with silver and carved marble the little house of the +Virgin--at Loreto the bride was met by a Jacobite dignitary, Lord +Carlyle, and five servants in the crimson liveries of England. At +Macerata, one of the larger towns of the March of Ancona, she was +awaited by her bridegroom. A noble family of the province, the +Compagnoni-Marefoschis, one of whom, a cardinal, was an old friend of +the Stuarts, had placed their palace at the disposal of the royal pair. +We most of us know what such palaces, in small Italian provincial towns +south of the Apennines, are apt to be; huge, gloomy, shapeless masses of +brickwork and mouldering plaster, something between a mediaeval fortress +and a convent; great black archways, where the refuse of the house, the +filth of the town, has peaceably accumulated (and how much more in those +days); magnificent statued staircases given over to the few servants +who have replaced the armed bravos of two centuries ago; long suites +of rooms, vast, resounding like so many churches, glazed in the last +century with tiny squares of bad glass, through which the light +comes green and thick as through sea-water; carpets still despised +as a new-fangled luxury from France; the walls, not cheerful with +eighteenth-century French panel and hangings, but covered with big naked +frescoed men and women, or faded arras; few fire-places, but those few +enormous, looking like a huge red cavern in the room. The Marefoschis +had got together all their best furniture and plate, and the palace was +filled with torches and wax lights; a funereal illumination in a +funereal place, it must have seemed to the little Princess of Stolberg, +fresh from the brilliant nattiness of the Parisian houses of the time of +Louis XV. + +The bride alighted; a small, plump, well-proportioned, rather childish +creature, with still half-formed childish features, a trifle snub, a +trifle soulless, very pretty, tender, light-hearted; a charming little +creature, very well made to steal folk's hearts unconscious to +themselves and to herself. + +The bridegroom met her. A faded, but extremely characteristic crayon +portrait, the companion of the one of which I have already spoken, now +in the possession of Cavaliere Emilio Santarelli (the only man still +living who can remember that same Louise d'Albany), a portrait evidently +taken at this time, has shown me what that bridegroom must have been. +The man who met Louise of Stolberg at Macerata as her husband and +master, the man who had once been Bonnie Prince Charlie, was tall, +big-boned, gaunt, and prematurely bowed for his age of fifty-two; +dressed usually, and doubtless on this occasion, with the blue ribbon +and star, in a suit of crimson watered silk, which threw up a red +reflection into his red and bloated face. A red face, but of a livid, +purplish red suffused all over the heavy furrowed forehead to where it +met the white wig, all over the flabby cheeks, hanging in big loose +folds upon the short, loose-folded red neck; massive features, but +coarsened and drawn; and dull, thick, silent-looking lips, of purplish +red scarce redder than the red skin; pale blue eyes tending to a watery +greyness, leaden, vague, sad, but with angry streakings of red; +something inexpressibly sad, gloomy, helpless, vacant and debased in the +whole face: such was the man who awaited Louise of Stolberg in the +Compagnoni-Marefoschi palace at Macerata, and who, on Good Friday the +17th of April 1772, wedded her in the palace chapel and signed his name +in the register as Charles III., King of Great Britain, France, and +Ireland. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +THE BRIDEGROOM. + + +On the Wednesday after Easter the bride and bridegroom made their solemn +entry into Rome; the two travelling carriages of the Prince and of the +Princess were drawn by six horses; four gala coaches, carrying the +attendants of Charles Edward and of his brother the Cardinal Duke of +York, followed behind, and the streets were cleared by four outriders +dressed in scarlet with the white Stuart cockade. The house to which +Louise of Stolberg, now Louise d'Albany, or rather, as she signed +herself at this time, Louise R., was conducted after her five days' +wedding journey, has passed through several hands since belonging to the +Sacchettis, the Muti Papazzurris, and now-a-days to the family of +About's charming and unhappy Tolla Ferraldi. Clement XI. had given or +lent it to the Elder Pretender: James III., as he was styled in Italy, +had settled in it about 1719 with his beautiful bride Maria Clementina +Sobieska, romantically filched by her Jacobites from the convent at +Innsbruck, where the Emperor Charles VI. had hoped to restrain her from +so compromising a match; here, in the year 1720, Charles Edward had been +born and had his baby fingers kissed by the whole sacred college; and +here the so-called King of England had died at last, a melancholy +hypochondriac, in 1766. The palace closes in the narrow end of the +square of the Santissimi Apostoli, stately and quiet with its various +palaces, Colonna, Odescalchi, and whatever else their names, and its +pillared church front. There is a certain aristocratic serenity about +that square, separated, like a big palace yard, from the bustling Corso +in front; yet to me there remains, a tradition of my childhood, a sort +of grotesque and horrid suggestiveness connected with this peaceful and +princely corner of Rome. For, many years ago, when the square of the +Santissimi Apostoli was still periodically strewn with sand that the +Pope might not be jolted when his golden coach drove up to the church, +and when the names of Charles Edward and his Countess were curiously +mixed up in my brain with those of Charles the First and Mary Queen of +Scots, there used to be in a little street leading out of the square +towards the Colonna Gardens, a dark recess in the blank church-wall, an +embrasure, sheltered by a pent-house roof and raised like a stage a few +steep steps above the pavement; and in it loomed, strapped to a chair, +dark in the shadow, a creature in a long black robe and a skull cap +drawn close over his head; a vague, contorted, writhing and gibbering +horror, of whose St. Vitus twistings and mouthings we children scarcely +ventured to catch a glimpse as we hurried up the narrow street, followed +by the bestial cries and moans of the solitary maniac. This weird and +grotesque sight, more weird and more grotesque seen through a muddled +childish fancy and through the haze of years, has remained associated in +my mind with that particular corner of Rome, where, with windows looking +down upon that street, upon that blank church-wall with its little +black recess, the palace of the Stuarts closes in the narrow end of the +square of the Santissimi Apostoli. And now, I cannot help seeing a +certain strange appropriateness in the fact that the image of that +mouthing and gesticulating half-witted creature should be connected in +my mind with the house to which, with pomp of six-horse coaches and +scarlet outriders, Charles Edward Stuart conducted his bride. + +Illustration: CHARLES EDWARD STUART + _From a pastel, painter unknown, once in the possession of the + heir of the Countess of Albany's heir Fabre. Now in the possession + of Mrs. Horace Walpole, of Heckfield Place, Winchfield, Hants._ + +For the beautiful and brilliant youth who had secretly left that palace +twenty-four years before to re-conquer his father's kingdom, the gentle +and gallant and chivalric young prince of whose irresistible manner and +voice the canny chieftains had vainly bid each other beware when he +landed with his handful of friends and called the Highlanders to arms; +the patient and heroic exile, singing to his friends when the sea washed +over their boat and the Hanoverian soldiers surrounded their cavern or +hovel, who had silently given Miss Macdonald that solemn kiss which she +treasured for more than fifty years in her strong heart--that Charles +Edward Stuart was now a creature not much worthier and not much less +repulsive than the poor idiot whom I still see, flinging about his +palsied hands and gobbling with his speechless mouth, beneath the +windows of the Stuart palace. The taste for drinking, so strange in a +man brought up to the age of twenty-three among the proverbially sober +Italians, had arisen in Charles Edward, a most excusable ill habit in +one continually exposed to wet and cold, frequently sleeping on the damp +ground, ill-fed, anxious, worn out by over-exertion in flying before his +enemies, during those frightful months after the defeat at Culloden, +when, with a price of thirty thousand pounds upon his head, he had +lurked in the fastnesses of the Hebrides. We hear that on the eve of his +final escape from Scotland, his host, Macdonald of Kingsburgh, prevented +the possible miscarriage of all their perilous plans only by smashing +the punch-bowl over which the Pretender, already more than half drunk, +had insisted upon spending the night. Still more significant is the +fact, recorded by Hugh Macdonald of Balshair, that when Charles Edward +was concealed in a hovel in the isle of South Uist, the prince and his +faithful followers continued drinking (the words are Balshair's own) +"for three days and three nights." Hard drinking was, we all know, a +necessary accomplishment in the Scotland of those days; and hard +drinking, we must all of us admit, may well have been the one comfort +and resource of a man undergoing the frightful mental and bodily +miseries of those months of lying at bay. But Charles Edward did not +relinquish the habit when he was back again in safety and luxury. +Strangely compounded of an Englishman and a Pole, the Polish element, +the brilliant and light-hearted chivalry, the cheerful and youthfully +wayward heroism which he had inherited from the Sobieskis, seemed to +constitute the whole of Charles Edward's nature when he was young and, +for all his reverses, still hopeful; as he grew older, as deferred +and disappointed hopes, and endured ignominy, made him a middle-aged +man before his time, then also did the other hereditary strain, the +morose obstinacy, the gloomy brutality of James II. and of his father +begin to appear, and gradually obliterated every trace of what had been +the splendour and charm of the Prince Charlie of the '45. Disappointed +of the assistance of France, which had egged him to this great enterprise +only to leave him shamefully in the lurch, Charles Edward had, immediately +upon the peace of Aix la Chapelle, become an embarrassing guest of +Louis XV., and a guest of whom the victorious English were continually +requiring the ignominious dismissal; until, wearied by the indifference +to all hints and orders to free France from his compromising presence, +the Court of Versailles had descended to the incredible baseness of +having the Prince kidnapped as he was going to the opera, bound hand and +foot, carried like a thief to the fortress of Vincennes, and then +conducted to the frontier like a suspected though unconvicted swindler, +or other public nuisance. + +This indignity, coming close upon the irreparable blow dealt to the +Jacobite cause by the stupid selfishness which impelled Charles Edward's +younger brother to become a Romish priest and a cardinal, appears to +have definitively decided the extraordinary change in the character of +the Young Pretender. During the many years of skulking, often completely +lost to the sight both of Jacobite adherents and of Hanoverian spies, +which followed upon that outrage of the year 1748, the few glimpses +which we obtain of Charles Edward show us only a precociously aged, +brutish and brutal sot, obstinate in disregarding all efforts to restore +him to a worthier life, yet not obstinate enough to refuse unnecessary +pecuniary aid from the very government and persons by whom he had been +so cruelly outraged. We hear that Charles Edward's confessor, with whom, +despite his secret abjuration of Catholicism, he continued to associate, +was a notorious drunkard; and that the mistress with whom he lived for +many years, and whom he even passed off as his wife, was also addicted +to drinking; nay, Lord Elcho is said to have witnessed a tipsy squabble +between the Young Pretender and Miss Walkenshaw, the lady in question, +across the table of a low Paris tavern. The reports of the many spies +whom the English Government set everywhere on his traces are constant +and unanimous in one item of information: the Prince began to drink +early in the morning, and was invariably dead drunk by the evening; nay, +some letters of Cardinal York, addressed to an unknown Jacobite, speak +of the "nasty bottle, that goes on but too much, and certainly must at +last kill him." But, although drunkenness undoubtedly did much to +obliterate whatever still remained of the hero of the '45, it was +itself only one of the proofs of the strange metamorphosis which had +taken place in his character. We cannot admit the plea of some of his +biographers, who would save his honour at the price of his reason. +Charles Edward was the victim neither of an hereditary vice nor of a +mental disease; drink was in his case not a form of madness, but merely +the ruling passion of a broken-spirited and degraded nature. He had the +power when he married, and even much later in life, when he sent for his +illegitimate daughter, of refraining from his usual excesses; his will, +impaired though it was, still existed, and what was wanting in the sad +second half of his career was not resolution, but conscience, pride, an +ideal, anything which might beget the desire of reform. The curious +mixture of brow-beating moroseness with a brazen readiness to accept and +even extort favours, he would appear, as he ceased to be young, to have +gradually inherited from his father; he was ready to live on the alms of +the French Court, while never losing an opportunity of declaiming +against the ignoble treatment which that same Court had inflicted on +him. He became sordid and grasping in money matters, basely begging +for money, which he did not require, from those who, like Gustavus III. +of Sweden, discovered only too late that he was demeaning himself from +avarice and not from necessity. While keeping a certain maudlin sentiment +about his exploits and those of his followers, which manifested itself +in cruelly pathetic scenes when, as in his old age, people talked to him +of the Highlands and the Rebellion; he was wholly without any sense of +his obligation towards men who had exposed their life and happiness for +him, of the duty which bound him to repay their devotion by docility to +their advice, by sacrifice of his inclinations, or even by such mere +decency of behaviour as would spare them the bitterness of allegiance to +a disreputable and foul-mouthed sot. But, until the moment when old and +dying, he placed himself in the strong hands of his natural daughter, +Charles Edward seems to have been, however obstinate in his favouritism, +incapable of any real affection. When his brother Henry became a priest +Charles held aloof for long years both from him and from his father; and +this resentment of what was after all a mere piece of bigoted folly, may +be partially excused by the fact that the identification of his family +with Popery had seriously damaged the prospects of Jacobitism. But the +lack of all lovingness in his nature is proved beyond possibility of +doubt by the brutal manner in which, while obstinately refusing to part +with his mistress at the earnest entreaty of his adherents, he explained +to their envoy Macnamara that his refusal was due merely to resentment +at any attempted interference in his concerns; but that, for the rest, +he had not the smallest affection or consideration remaining for +the woman they wished to make him relinquish. As if all the stupid +selfishness bred of centuries of royalty had accumulated in this man +who might be king only through his own and his adherents' magnanimity, +Charles Edward seemed, in the second period of his life, to feel as +if he had a right over everything, and nobody else had a right over +anything; all sense of reciprocity was gone; he would accept devotion, +self-sacrifice, generosity, charity--nay, he would even insist upon +them; but he would give not one tittle in return; so that, forgetful of +the heroism and clemency and high spirit of his earlier days, one might +almost think that his indignant answer to Cardinal de Tenein, who +offered him England and Scotland if he would cede Ireland to France, +"Everything or nothing, Monsieur le Cardinal!" was dictated less by the +indignation of an Englishman than by the stubborn graspingness of a +Stuart. His further behaviour towards Miss Walkenshaw shows the same +indifference to everything except what he considered his own rights. He +had crudely admitted that he cared nothing for her, that it was only +because his adherents wished her dismissal that he did not pack her off; +and subsequently he seems to have given himself so little thought either +for his mistress or for his child by her, that, without the benevolence +of his brother the Cardinal, they might have starved. But when, after +long endurance of his jealousy and brutality, after being watched like +a prisoner and beaten like a slave, the wretched woman at length took +refuge in a convent, Charles Edward's rage knew no bounds; and he +summoned the French Government, despite his old quarrel with it, to +kidnap and send back the woman over whom he had no legal rights, and +certainly no moral ones, with the obstinacy and violence of a drunken +navvy clamouring for the wife whom he has well-nigh done to death. +Beyond the mere intemperance and the violence born of intemperance which +made Charles Edward's name a byword and served the Hanoverian dynasty +better than all the Duke of Cumberland's gibbets, there was at the +bottom of the Pretender's character--his second character at least, his +character after the year 1750--heartlessness and selfishness, an absence +of all ideal and all gratitude, much more morally repulsive than any +mere vice, and of which the vice which publicly degraded him was the +result much more than the cause. The curse of kingship in an age +when royalty had lost all utility, the habit of irresponsibility, of +indifference, the habit of always claiming and never giving justice, +love, self-sacrifice, all the good things of this world, this curse had +lurked, an evil strain, in the nature of this king without a kingdom, +and had gradually blighted and made hideous what had seemed an almost +heroic character. Royal-souled Charles Edward Stuart had certainly +been in his youth; brilliant with all those virtues of endurance, +clemency, and affability which the earlier eighteenth century still +fondly associated with the divine right of kings; and royal-souled, hard +and weak with all the hardness and weakness, the self-indulgence, +obstinacy, and thoughtlessness for others of effete races of kings, he +had become no less certainly, in the second part of his life; branded +with God's own brand of unworthiness, which signifies that a people, or +a class, or a family, is doomed to extinction. + +Such was the man to whom the easy-going habit of the world, the +perfectly self-righteous indifference to a woman's happiness or honour +of the well-bred people of that day, gave over as a partner for life a +half-educated, worldly-ignorant and absolutely will-less young girl of +nineteen and a half, who doubtless considered herself extremely +fortunate in being chosen for so brilliant a match. + +There is a glamour, even for us, connected with the name of Charles +Edward Stuart; in his youth he forms a brilliant speck of romantic light +in that dull eighteenth century, a spot of light surrounded by the halo +of glory of the devotion which he inspired and the enthusiasm which he +left behind him. We feel, in a way, grateful to him almost as we might +feel grateful to a clever talker, a beautiful woman, a bright day, as to +something pleasing and enlivening to our fancy. But the brilliant effect +which has pleased us is like some gorgeous pageant connected with the +worship of a stupid and ferocious divinity; nay, rather, if we let our +thoughts dwell upon the matter, if we remember how, while the prisons +and ship-holds were pestilent with the Jacobite men and women penned up +like cattle in obscene promiscuity, while the mutilated corpses were +lying still green, piled up under the bog turf of Culloden, while so +many of the bravest men of Scotland, who had supplicated the Young +Pretender not to tempt them to a hopeless enterprise, were cheerfully +mounting the scaffold "for so sweet a prince," Charles Edward was +dancing at Versailles in his crimson silk dress and diamonds, with +his black-eyed boast the eldest-born Princess of France. Nay, worse, +if we remember how the man, for whose love and whose right so much +needless agony had been expended, let himself become a disgrace to the +very memory of the men who had died for him: if we bear all this in +mind, Charles Edward seems to become a mere irresponsible and fated +representative of some evil creed; the idol, at first fair-shapen and +smiling, then hideous and loathsome, to which human sacrifices are +brought in solemnity; a glittering idol of silver, or a foul idol of +rotten wood, but without nerves and mind to perceive the weeping all +around, the sop of blood at its feet. And now, after the sacrifice of so +many hundreds of brave men to this one man, comes the less tragic, less +heroic, perfectly legitimate and correct sacrifice to him of a pretty +young woman, not brave and not magnanimous, but very fit for innocent +enjoyment and very fit for honourable love. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +REGINA APOSTOLORUM. + + +Charles Edward had refrained from drink, or at least refrained from any +excesses, in honour of his marriage. Perhaps the notion that France was +again taking him up, a notion well-founded since France had bid him +marry and have an heir, and the recollection of the near miscarriage of +all his projects, thanks to having presented himself, a year before, to +the French Minister so drunk that he could neither speak nor be spoken +to, perhaps the old hope of becoming after all a real king, had turned +the Pretender into a temporarily-reformed character. Or, perhaps, weary +of the life of melancholy solitude, of debauched squalor, of the moral +pig-stye in which he had been rotting so many years, the idea of +decency, of dignity, of society, of a wife and children and friends, +may have made him capable of a strong resolution. Perhaps, also, the +unfamiliar, wonderful presence of a beautiful and refined young woman, +of something to adore, or at least to be jealous and vain of, may have +wakened whatever still remained of the gallant and high-spirited Polish +nature in this morose and besotten old Stuart. Be this as it may, +Charles Edward, however degraded, was able to command himself when he +chose, and, for one reason or another, he did choose to command himself +and behave like a tolerably decent man and husband during the first few +months following on his marriage. Besides the redness of his face, the +leaden suffused look of his eyes, the vague air of degradation all about +him, there was perhaps nothing, at first, that revealed to Louise, Queen +of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, that her husband was a drunkard +and well-nigh a maniac. Engaging he certainly could not have been, +however much he tried (and we know he tried hard) to show his full +delight at having got so charming a little wife; indeed, it is easy to +imagine that if anything might inspire even a properly educated and +high-born young Flemish or German lady of the eighteenth century with +somewhat of a sense of loathing, it must have been the assiduities and +endearments of a man such as Charles Edward. But Louise of Stolberg had +doubtless absorbed, from her mother, from her older fellow-canonesses, +nay, from the very school-girls in the convent where she had been +educated, all proper views, negative and positive, on the subject of +marriage; nor must we give to a girl who was probably still too much of +a child, too much of an unromantic little woman of the world, undeserved +pity on account of degradation which she had most probably, as yet, not +sufficient moral nerve to appreciate. Her husband was old, he was ugly, +he was not attractive; he may have been tiresome and rather loathsome in +his constant attendance; he may even have smelt of brandy every now and +then; but as marriages had been invented in order to give young women a +position in the world, husbands were not expected to be much more than +drawbacks to the situation; and as to the sense of life-long dependence +upon an individual, as to the desire for love and sympathy, it was still +too early in the eighteenth century, and perhaps, also, too early in the +life of a half-Flemish, half-German girl, very childish still in aspect, +and brought up in the worldly wisdom of a noble chapter of canonesses, +to expect anything of that kind. + +There must, however, from the very beginning, have been something unreal +and uncanny in the girl's situation. The huge old palace, crammed with +properties of dead Stuarts and Sobieskis, with its royal throne and dais +in the ante-room, its servants in the royal liveries of England, must +have been full of rather lugubrious memories. Here James III. of England +and VIII. of Scotland had moped away his bitter old age; here, years +and years ago, Charles Edward's mother, the beautiful and brilliant +grand-daughter of John Sobieski, had pined away, bullied and cajoled back +from the convent in which she had taken refuge, perpetually outraged by +the violence of her husband and the insolence of his mistress; it was an +ill-omened sort of place for a bride. Around extended the sombre and +squalid Rome of the second half of the eighteenth century, with its +huge ostentatious rococo palaces and churches, its straggled, black +and filthy streets, its ruins still embedded in nettles and filth, its +population seemingly composed only of monks and priests (for all men of +the middle-classes wore the black dress and short hair of the clergy), +or of half-savage peasants and workmen, bearded creatures, in wonderful +embroidered vests and scarves, looking exceedingly like brigands, as +Bartolomeo Pinelli etched them even some thirty years later. A town +where every doorway was a sewer by day and a possible hiding-place for +thieves by night; where no woman durst cross the street alone after +dusk, and no man dared to walk home unattended after nine or ten; where, +driving about in her gilded state-coach of an afternoon, the Pretender's +bride must often have met a knot of people conveying a stabbed man (the +average gave more than one assassination per day) to the nearest barber +or apothecary, the blood of the murdered man mingling, in the black ooze +about the rough cobble-stones over which the coaches jolted, with the +blood trickling from the disembowelled sheep hanging, ghastly in their +fleeces, from the hooks outside the butchers' and cheesemongers' shops; +or returning home at night from the opera, amid the flare of the +footmen's torches, must have heard the distant cries of some imprudent +person struggling in the hands of marauders; or, again, on Sundays and +holidays have been stopped by the crowd gathered round the pillory where +some too easy-going husband sat crowned with a paper-cap in a hail-storm +of mud and egg-shells and fruit-peelings, round the scaffold where some +petty offender was being flogged by the hangman, until the fortunate +appearance of a clement cardinal or the rage of the sympathising mob put +a stop to the proceedings. Barbarous as we remember the Rome of the +Popes, we must imagine it just a hundred times more barbarous, more +squalid, picturesque, filthy, and unsafe if we would know what it was a +hundred years ago. + +But in this barbarous Rome there were things more beautiful and +wonderful to a young Flemish lady of the eighteenth century than they +could possibly be to us, indifferent and much-cultured creatures of the +nineteenth century, who know that most art is corrupt and most music +trashy. The private galleries of Rome were then in process of formation; +pictures which had hung in dwelling-rooms were being assembled in those +beautiful gilded and stuccoed saloons, with their out-look on to the +cloisters of a court, or the ilex tops or orange espaliers of a garden, +filled with the faint splash of the fountains outside, the spectral +silvery chiming of musical clocks, where, unconscious of the thousands of +beings who would crowd in there armed with guide-books and opera-glasses +in the days to come, only stray foreigners were to be met, foreigners +who most likely were daintily embroidered and powdered aristocrats from +England or Germany, if they were not men like Winckelmann, or Goethe, or +Beckford. It was the great day, also, for excavations; the vast majority +of antiques which we now see in Rome having been dug up at that period; +and among the ilexes of the Ludovisi and Albani gardens, among the laurels +and rough grass of the Vatican hill, porticoes were being built, and +long galleries and temple-like places, where a whole people of marble +might live among the newly-found mosaics and carved altars and vases. +Moreover, there was at that time in Rome a thing of which there is now +less in Rome than anywhere, perhaps, in the world--a thing for which +English and Germans came expressly to Italy: there was music. A large +proportion of the best new operas were always brought out in Rome--always +four or five new ones in each season; and the young singers from the +conservatorios of Naples came to the ecclesiastical city, where no +actresses were suffered, to begin their career in the hoop skirts and +stomachers, and powdered _toupes_ with which the eighteenth century was +wont to conceive the heroines of ancient Greece and Rome. The bride of +Charles Edward was herself a tolerable musician, and she had a taste for +painting and sculpture which developed into a perfect passion in +after life; so, with respect to art, there was plenty to amuse her. + +It was different with regard to society. By insisting upon royal honours +such as had been enjoyed by his father, but which the Papal Court, +anxious to keep on good terms with England, absolutely refused to give +him, the Pretender had virtually cut himself and his wife out of all +Roman society; for he would not know the nobles on a footing of equality, +and they, on the other hand, dared know him on no other. The great +entertainments in the palaces where Charles Edward had so often danced, +the admired of all beholders, in his boyhood, were not for the Count and +Countess of Albany. There remained the theatres and public balls, to +which the Pretender conducted his wife with the assiduity of a man +immensely vain of having on his arm a woman far too young and too pretty +for his deserts. And, besides this, there was a certain amount of vague, +shifting foreign society, nobles on the loose, and young men on their +grand tour, who mostly considered that a visit to the Palazzo Muti, or +at least a seemingly accidental meeting and introduction in the lobby of +a theatre or the garden of a villa, was an indispensable part of their +sight-seeing. Such people as these were the guests of the Palazzo Muti; +and, together with a few Jacobite hangers-on, constituted the fluctuating +little Court of Louise, Queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, +whom the people of Rome, hearing of the throne and dais in the ante-room +and of the royal ceremonial in the palace near the Santissimi Apostoli, +usually spoke of as the _Regina Apostolorum_; while only a very few, who +had approached that charming little blonde lady, corrected the title to +that of Queen of Hearts, Regina dei Cuori. Among the few who bowed +before Charles Edward's wife, in consideration of this last-named +kingdom, was a brilliant, wayward young man, destined to remain a sort +of brilliant, wayward, impracticable child until he was eighty; and +destined, also, to cherish throughout the long lives of both, the sort +of half genuine, half affected, boy's, or rather page's, passion with +which Queen Louise had inspired him. Karl Victor von Bonstetten, of a +patrician family of Bern, a Frenchified German, more French, more +butterfly-like than any real Frenchman, even of the old _regime_, came +to Rome, already well-known by his romantic friendship with the Swiss +historian Mueller, and by the ideas which he had desultorily and gaily +aired on most subjects, in the year 1773. In his memoirs he wrote as +follows of the "Queen of Hearts": "She was of middle height, fair, with +dark-blue eyes, a slightly turned-up nose, and a dazzling white English +complexion. Her expression was gay and _espiegle_, and not without a +spice of irony, on the whole more French than German. She was enough to +turn all heads. The Pretender was tall, lean, good-natured, talkative. +He liked to have opportunities of speaking English, and was given to +talking a great deal about his adventures--interesting enough for a +visitor, but not equally so for his intimates, who had probably heard +those stories a hundred times over. After every sentence almost he would +ask, in Italian, 'Do you understand?' His young wife laughed heartily at +the story of his dressing up in woman's clothes." A dull, garrulous +husband, boring people with stories of which they were sick; a childish +little wife, trying to make the best of things, and laughing over the +stale old jokes; this is what may be called the idyllic moment in the +wedded life of Charles Edward and Louise. What would she have felt, that +strong, calm lady, growing old far off in the Isle of Skye, had she been +able to see what Bonstetten saw; had she heard the Count and Countess of +Albany laughing, the one with the laughter of an old sot, the other with +the laughter of a giddy child, over the adventures of that heroic Prince +Charlie whose memory was safe in her heart as the sheets he had slept in +were safe in her closet, waiting to be her grave-clothes? + +Forty-four years later, when the Queen of Hearts was a stout, dowdy old +lady, with no traces of beauty, and himself a flighty, amiable old +gossip of seventy, Karl Victor von Bonstetten wrote to the Countess of +Albany from Rome: "I never pass through the Apostles' square without +looking up at that balcony, at that house where I saw you for the first +time." + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +THE HEIR. + + +In 1765 Horace Walpole, mentioning the now-ascertained fact of the +Pretender's abjuration of Catholicism, informed his friend Mann that +a rumour was about that Charles Edward had declared his intention of +never marrying, in order that no more Stuarts should remain to embroil +England. This magnanimous resolution, which was a mere repetition of an +answer made years ago by the Pretender's father, did not hold good +against the temptations of the Cabinet of Versailles. There is something +particularly disgusting in the thought that, merely because the French +Government thought it convenient to keep a Stuart in reserve with whom, +if necessary, to trip up England, the once magnanimous Charles Edward +consented to marry in consideration of a certain pension from Versailles; +to make money out of any possible or probable son he might have. This, +however, was the plain state of the case; and Louise of Stolberg had +been selected, and married to a drunkard old enough to be her father, +merely that this honourable bargain between the man outraged in 1748, +and the Government which had outraged him, might be satisfactorily +fulfilled. + +The Court of Versailles wasted its money: the officially-negotiated baby +was never born. Nay, Sir Horace Mann, the English Minister at Florence, +whose spies watched every movement of the Count and Countess of Albany, +was able to report to his Government, in answer to a vague rumour of the +coming of an heir, that the wife of Charles Edward Stuart had never, at +any moment, had any reasons for expecting to become a mother. And when, +in the first years of this century, Henry Benedict, Cardinal York, the +younger brother of Charles Edward, was buried where the two melancholy +genii of Canova keep watch in St. Peter's, opposite to the portrait of +Maria Clementina Sobieska in powder and paint and patches, a certain +solemn feeling came over most Englishmen with the thought that the race +of James II. was now extinct. + +But the world had forgotten that the children of Edward IV. were +resuscitated; that the son of Louis XVI., whose poor little dead body +had been handled by the Commissary of the Republic, had returned to +earth in the shape of five or six perfectly distinct individuals, +Bruneau, Hervagault, Naundorff, whatever else their names; that King +Arthur is still living in the kingdom of Morgan le Fay; and Barbarossa +still asleep on the stone table, waiting till the rooks which circle +round the Kiefhaeuser hill shall tell him to arise; and the world had, +therefore, to learn that a Stuart still existed. The legend runs as +follows. + +In 1773, a certain Dr. Beaton, a staunch Jacobite, who had fought at +Culloden, was attracted, while travelling in Italy, by the knowledge +that his legitimate sovereigns were spending part of the summer at a +villa in the neighbourhood, to a vague place somewhere in the Apennines +between Parma and Lucca, distinguished by the extremely un-Tuscan name +of St. Rosalie. Here, while walking about "in the deep quiet shades," +the doctor was one day startled by a "calash and four, with scarlet +liveries," which dashed past him and up an avenue. During the one moment +of its rapid passage, the Scotch physician recognised in the rather +apocalyptic gentleman wearing the garter and the cross of St. Andrew, +who sat by the side of a beautiful young woman, "the Bonnie Prince Charlie +of our faithful beau ideal, still the same eagle-featured, royal bird, +which I had seen on his own mountains, when he spread his wings towards +the south." Towards dusk of that same day, as Dr. Beaton was pacing up +and down the convent church of St. Rosalie, doubtless thinking over that +"eagle-featured royal bird," whom he had seen driving in the calash and +four, he was startled in his meditations by the jingle of spurs on the +pavement, and by the approach of a man "of superior appearance." + +This person was dressed in a manner which was "a little equivocal," +wore a broad hat and a thick moustache, which, joined with the sternness +of his pale cheek and the piercingness of his eye, must indeed have +suggested something extremely eerie to a well-shaven, three-corner hat, +respectable man of the eighteenth century; so that we are not at all +surprised to hear that the doctor's imagination was crossed by "a sudden +idea of the celebrated Torrifino," who, although his name sounds like a +sweetmeat, was probably one of the many mysterious Italians, brothers of +the Count of Udolpho and Spalatro and Zeluco, who haunted the readers of +the romances of the latter eighteenth century. This personage enquired +whether he was addressing "il Dottor Betoni Scozzere." + +The physician having answered this question, asked, for no conceivable +reason, in bad Italian of a Scotchman by a Scotchman (for we learn that +the unknown was a Chevalier Graham), the mysterious moustached man +requested him to attend at once upon "one who stood in immediate need." +Dr. Beaton's enquiries as to the nature of the assistance and the person +who required it, having been answered with the solemn remark that "the +relief of the malady, and not the circumstances of the patient, is the +province of a physician," and the proposal being made that he should go +to the sick person blindfolded and in a shuttered carriage, the doctor's +prudence and the thought of the famous Torrifino dictated a flat refusal; +but the mysterious stranger would not let him off. "Signor," he exclaimed +(persistently talking bad Italian), "I respect your doubts; by one word +I could dispel them; but it is a secret which would be embarrassing to +the possessor. It concerns the interest and safety of one--the most +illustrious and unfortunate of the Scottish Jacobites." "What! Whom?" +exclaimed Dr. Beaton. "I can say no more," replied the stranger; "but if +you would venture any service for one who was once the dearest to your +country and your cause, follow me." "Let us go," cried Dr. Beaton, the +enthusiasm for Prince Charlie entirely getting the better of the thought +of the famous Torrifino; and so, blindfolded, he was conveyed, partly by +land and partly by water (what water, in those Apennine valleys where +there are no streams save torrents in which even a punt would be +impossible, it is difficult to understand), to a house standing in a +garden. That it did stand in a garden appears to have been a piece of +information volunteered by the mysterious Chevalier Graham, for Dr. +Beaton expressly states that it was not till the two had passed through +a "long range of apartments" that the bandage was removed from his eyes. + +The doctor found himself in a "splendid saloon, hung with crimson +velvet, and blazing with mirrors which reached from the ceiling to the +floor. At the farther end a pair of folding doors stood open, and showed +the dim perspective of a long conservatory." The mysterious Chevalier +Graham rang a silver bell, which summoned a little page dressed in +scarlet, with whom he exchanged a few rapid words in German. The +communication appeared to agitate the Chevalier; and after dismissing +the page, he turned to the doctor. "Signor Dottore," he said, "the most +important part of your occasion is past. The lady whom you have been +unhappily called to attend, met with an alarming accident in her +carriage, not half an hour before I found you in the church, and the +unlucky absence of her physician leaves her entirely under your charge. +Her accouchement is over, apparently without any result more than +exhaustion; but of that you will be the judge." + +It was only at the mention of the carriage and the accident that Dr. +Beaton, whose wits appear to have been wool-gathering, suddenly guessed +at a possible connection between these "most illustrious and unfortunate +of Scottish Jacobites," to whose house he had been thus mysteriously +introduced, and the lady and gentleman in whom he had that same afternoon +recognised Charles Edward and his wife. The page reappeared, and +conducted Dr. Beaton through another suite of splendid apartments, till +they came to an ante-room decorated with the portraits of no less +remarkable persons than the rebel Duke of Perth and King James VIII., a +fact which shows that the Stuarts must have carried their furniture with +them, from Rome to a Lucchese villa hired for a few months, with more +recklessness than one might have imagined likely in those days of +post-chaises. Out of this ante-room the physician was ushered into a +large and magnificent bed-room, lit with a single taper. From the side +of a crimson-draped bed stepped a lady, who saluted Dr. Beaton in +English, and led him up to the patient, while a female attendant nursed +an infant enveloped in a mantle. The lady drew aside the curtain, and by +the faint light the doctor was able to distinguish a pale, delicate +face, and a slender white arm and hand lying upon the blue velvet +counterpane. The lady in waiting said some words in German, in answer +to which the sick woman feebly attempted to stretch out her hand to +the physician. Having ascertained that the patient was in a dangerous +condition, Dr. Beaton asked for pen and paper to write out a prescription, +which, in that Apennine wilderness, would doubtless be made up with the +greatest exactness and rapidity. By the side of the writing-desk was a +dressing-table; and on what should the doctor's casual glance not rest +but a miniature, thrown carelessly among the scent bottles and jewels, +and in which he instantly recognised a portrait of Charles Edward such +as he had seen him riding on the field of Culloden! But in a moment, +when he glanced again from his writing to the toilet-table, the +miniature was no longer visible. + +The lady having apparently recovered, Dr. Beaton was dismissed, +blindfolded as he had come, but only after having taken an oath upon the +crucifix "never to speak of what he had heard, or seen, or thought, +that night, except it should be in the service of King Charles," and +also to quit Tuscany immediately. He repaired, therefore, to the nearest +seaport, but was detained there three days before the departure of his +ship. One moonlight evening, as he was walking on the sands, he was +surprised by seeing an English man-of-war at anchor. In answer to his +enquiries, she proved to be the _Albina_, Commodore O'Haloran. While he +was lying in a sequestered corner, watching the frigate, he was startled +by the sudden appearance of a small closed carriage and of a horseman, +in whom, by the moonlight, he immediately recognised the moustached +stranger of St. Rosalie. The cavalcade stopped at the water's brink, +and the horseman blew a shrill whistle. Immediately a man-of-war's boat +shot from behind some rocks and pulled straight towards them. A man with +glimmering epaulettes sprang from the boat on to the beach, and helped +into it a lady, who had alighted from the carriage, and carried something +wrapped in a shawl. Dr. Beaton heard the cry of an infant, the soothing +voice of the lady; and, a moment later, after a word and shake of the +hand with the moustached man, the boat pulled off from shore. "For +more than a quarter of an hour the tall black figure of the cavalier +continued fixed upon the same spot, and in the same attitude; but +suddenly the broad gigantic shadow of the frigate swung round in the +moonshine, her sails filled to the breeze, and dimly brightening in the +light, she bore off slow and still and stately towards the west." + +Such is the adventure of Dr. Beaton, and thus he is said to have related +it, in the year 1831, eighty-five years after the battle of Culloden, +where he had himself seen Charles Edward; whence it is presumable that +the doctor was considerably over a hundred when he made the disclosure. +This story of Doctor Beaton was published, not in a historical work, but +in a volume entitled _Tales of the Century; or Sketches of the Romance +of History between the years 1746 and 1846_, published at Edinburgh in +1847. But although this book might pass as a work of imagination, and +could, therefore, scarcely be impugned as a historical document, there +is every reason for supposing that, while not officially claiming to +reveal the existence of an heir of the Stuarts, it was deliberately +intended to convey information to that effect; and as such, an anonymous +writer (either Lockhart or Dennistoun) made short work of it in the +_Quarterly Review_ for June 1847, from which I have derived the greater +part of my knowledge of this curious "romance of history." + +Nay, the _Tales of the Century_ were undoubtedly intended to insinuate a +further remarkable fact: not merely that there still existed heirs of +Stuarts in the direct male line, but that these heirs of the Stuarts were +no others but the joint authors of the book. The two brothers styling +themselves on the title-page John Sobieski Stuart and Charles Edward +Stuart, but whose legal names were respectively John Hay Allan and +Charles Stuart Allan, had been known for some years in the Highlands as +persons enveloped in a degree of romantic mystery, and claiming to be +something much more illustrious than what they were officially supposed +to be, the grandsons of an admiral in the service of George III. +According to the information collected by Baron von Reumont, the joint +authors of the _Tales of the Century_ had made themselves conspicuous by +their affectation of the Stuart tartan, to which, as Hay Allans, they +could have no right; by a certain Stuart make-up (by the help of a +Charles I. wig which was once found and mistaken for a bird's-nest by an +irreverent Highlander) on the part of the elder, and by a habit of +bowing to his brother whenever the King's health was drunk on the part +of the younger. Moreover the family circumstances of these gentlemen's +father coincided exactly with those of the hero of this book, of the +supposed son of Charles Edward Stuart and Louise of Stolberg. Their +father, Thomas Hay Allan, once a lieutenant in the navy, was known +before the law as the younger son of a certain Admiral Carter Allan, who +laid claims to the earldom of Errol; and the Jolair Dhearg (for such was +the Keltic appellation of the hero of the _Tales of the Century_) was +the reputed son of a certain Admiral O'Haloran, who laid claim to the +Earldom of Strathgowrie, to which curious parallel the writer in the +_Quarterly_ adds the additional point that Errol, being in the district +of Gowrie, the Earldom of Strathgowrie claimed by the imaginary Admiral +O'Haloran was evidently another name for the Earldom of Errol claimed by +the real Admiral Carter Allan, two names, by the way, O'Haloran and +Carter Allan, of which the first seems intended to reproduce in some +measure the sound of the other. The father of Messrs. John Hay and +Charles Stuart Allan, was married in 1792, and the hero of the _Tales of +the Century_ was married somewhere about 1791, both to ladies more +suited to the sons of an admiral than to the sons of the Pretender. +Taking all these circumstances into consideration it becomes obvious +that when the two brothers Hay Allan assumed respectively the names +of John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart, they distinctly, though +unofficially, identified themselves with the sons of the Jolair Dhearg +of their book, with the sons of that mysterious infant at whose birth +Dr. Beaton had been present, who had been conveyed by night on board the +_Albina_ and educated as the son of Admiral O'Haloran; in other words, +with the sons of the child, unknown to history, of the Count and +Countess of Albany. + +Now, not only are we assured by Sir Horace Mann, whose spies surrounded +the Pretender and his wife, and included even their physicians, that +there never was the smallest or briefest expectation of an heir to the +Stuarts; but, added to this positive evidence, we have an enormous bulk +of even more convincing negative evidence by which it is completely +corroborated. This negative evidence consists of a heap of improbabilities +and impossibilities, of which even a few will serve to convince the +reader. The Pretender married, and was pensioned for marrying, merely +that the French Court might have another possible Pretender to use as a +weapon against England; is it likely, therefore, that such an heir would +be hid away so as to lose his identity, and be completely and utterly +forgotten? The Pretender, separated from his wife in consequence of +circumstances which will be related further on, called to him, as sole +companion of his old age, his illegitimate daughter by Miss Walkenshaw, +after neglecting and apparently forgetting both her and her mother for +twenty years; is it likely he would have done this had he possessed a +legitimate son? Cardinal York assumed the title of Henry IX. immediately +on the decease of his brother; is it likely that he, always indifferent +to royal honours, always faithful to his brother, and now almost dying, +would have done so had he known that his brother had left a son? The +Countess of Albany, who never relinquished her Stuart position, and who +was extremely devoted to children, left her fortune to the painter +Fabre; is it likely she would have done so had she been aware that she +possessed a child of her own? But there is yet further evidence--I +scarcely know whether I should say positive or negative, but in point of +fact perhaps both at once, since it is evidence that the word of one, at +least, of the joint authors of the _Tales of the Century_ cannot +outweigh the silence of all other authorities. Five years before the +brothers Allan, or Stuart, whichever they should be called, mysteriously +informed the world of the adventures of the Jolair Dhearg, the elder of +the two, once John Hay Allan, now John Sobieski Stuart, had brought out +a magnificent volume, price five guineas, entitled _Vestiarium +Scoticum_, and purporting to be a treatise on family tartans written +somewhere in the 16th century, and now edited for the first time. The +history of this work, as stated in the preface, was well-nigh as +complicated and as romantic as the history of the Jolair Dhearg. The +only reliable copy of three known by Mr. Sobieski Stuart, of which one +was said to exist in the library of the Monastery of St. Augustine at +Cadiz, and another had been obtained from an Edinburgh sword-player and +porter named John Ross, was in the possession of the learned editors, +and had been given by the fathers of the Scots College at Douay to +Prince Edward Stuart, from whom it had, in some unspecified but +doubtless extremely romantic manner (probably sewn in the swaddling +clothes in which the Jolair Dhearg was consigned to Admiral O'Haloran) +descended to Mr. John Sobieski Stuart. This venerable heraldic document +appears, if one may judge by the review in the _Quarterly_, to have +been well-deserving of publication, owing to the extremely new and +unexpected information which it contained upon Scottish archaeology. +Among such information may be mentioned that it derived several clans +from other clans with which they were well known to have no possible +connection; that it extended the use of tartans to border-families who +had never heard of such a thing; that it contained many words and +expressions hitherto entirely unknown in the particular dialect in which +it was written; and, moreover, that it multiplied complicated and +recondite patterns of tartans in a manner so remarkable that Sir Walter +Scott, to whom part of Mr. Sobieski Stuart's transcript of the ancient +MS. was submitted, was led to suspect "that information as to its origin +might be obtained even in a less romantic site than the cabin of a +Cowgate porter (or the Scots College at Douay), even behind the counter +of one of the great clan-tartan warehouses which used to illuminate the +principal thoroughfare of Edinburgh." + +This important and well-nigh unique document was apparently never +submitted in its original MS. to anyone; the copy from the Scots College +at Douay, and the copy from the old sword-player of Cowgate, remained +equally unknown to everyone save their fortunate possessor. But +transcripts of some portions of the work were submitted, at the request +of the Antiquarian Society, to Sir Walter Scott, and as he dismissed the +deputation which had met to hear his opinion upon the _Vestiarium +Scoticum_, the author of _Waverley_ was pleased to remark by way of +summing up: "Well, I think the _March_ of the next rising" (alluding to +the part of the Highlanders in the '45) "must be not 'Hey tuttie tattie,' +but 'The Devil among the Tailors.'" + +However, perhaps the _Vestiarium Scoticum_ may have come out of the +Scots College at Douay, and perhaps also the son of Charles Edward +Stuart and of Louise of Stolberg may have been born in the room hung +with red brocade, and have been handed over to a British Admiral one +moonlight night, in the presence of the venerable Dr. Beaton, whom +Providence permitted to attain the unusual age of a hundred years or +more, in order that, with unimpaired faculties and unclouded memory, he +might transmit to posterity this strange romance of history. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +FLORENCE. + + +It is quite impossible to tell the precise moment at which began what +Horace Mann, most light-hearted and chirpy of diplomatists, called the +Countess of Albany's martyrdom. As we have seen, Charles Edward had +momentarily given up all excessive drinking at the time of his marriage. +Bonstetten thought him a good-natured garrulous bore, and his wife a +merry, childish young woman, who laughed at her husband's oft-told +stories. This was the very decent exterior of the Pretender's domestic +life in the first year of his marriage. But who can tell what there may +have been before beneath the surface? Who can say when Louise d'Albany, +hitherto apparently so childish, became suddenly a woman with the first +terrible suspicion of the nature of the bondage into which she had been +sold? Such things are unromantic, unpoetical, coarse, common-place; yet +if the fears and the despair of a guiltless and charming girl have any +interest for us, the first whiff of brandy-tainted breath which met the +young wife in her husband's embraces, the first qualms and reekings +after dinner which came before her eyes, the first bestial and unquiet +drunkard's sleep which kept her awake in disgust and terror, these +things, vile though they be, are as tragic as any more ideal horrors. At +the beginning, most probably, Charles Edward drank only in the evening, +and slept off his drunkenness over-night; nor does Bonstetten appear to +have guessed that there was any skeleton in the palace at the Santissimi +Apostoli. But the spies of the English minister soon reported that +Charles Edward was returning to his old ways; that the "nasty bottle," +as Cardinal York called it, had got the better of the young wife; and +when, two years after their marriage, the Count and Countess of Albany +had left Rome and settled in Florence, Charles Edward seems very soon to +have acquired in the latter place the dreadful notoriety which he had +long enjoyed in the former. + +Circumstances also had conduced to replunge the Pretender into the +habits to which the renewed hope of political support, the novelty of +married life, and perhaps whatever of good may still have been conjured +up in his nature by the presence of a beautiful young wife, had +momentarily broken through. The French Government, after its sudden +pre-occupation about the future of the Stuarts, seemed to have +completely forgotten the existence of Charles Edward, except as regarded +the payment of the pension granted on his marriage. The child that had +been prepaid by that wedding pension, who was to rally the Jacobites +round a man whose claims must otherwise devolve legitimately in a few +years to the Hanoverian usurpers, the heir was not born, and, as month +went by after month, its final coming became less and less likely. Nor +was this all. Charles Edward seems to have expected that the sudden +interest taken by the Court of Versailles in his affairs, and his new +position as a married man and the possible father of a line of Stuarts, +would bring the obdurate sovereigns of Italy, and especially the Pope, +to grant him those royal honours enjoyed by his father, but hitherto +obstinately denied to the moody drunkard whose presence in the paternal +palace had been occasionally revealed only by the rumour of some more +than ordinarily gross debauch, or the noise of some more than ordinarily +violent scene of blackguardly altercation. + +Charles Edward, as I have already had occasion to remark, while +absolutely callous to the rights which self-sacrifice and heroism might +give others over him, was extremely alive to the rights which, as a +Stuart and as an obstinate and wilful man, he imagined himself to +possess over other folk; and, while it never occurred to him that there +might be something slightly ungentlemanly in a prince who had secretly +abjured the Catholic faith for political reasons continuing to live in a +house and on a pension granted him by the unsuspecting sovereign Pontiff +in consideration of his being a martyr for the glory of the Church, he +was fully persuaded of the cowardly meanness which prevented Clement +XIV., whose interest it was to jog on amicably with England, from +acknowledging the grandson of James II. as a legitimate King of Great +Britain and Ireland. It is therefore easy to conceive the accumulation +of disappointment and anger with which Charles Edward saw his hopes +deluded. He had, immediately on his return to Rome, officially announced +to Clement XIV. the arrival in the Eternal City of King Charles III. and +his Queen, and the Pope had condescended no answer save that he had +hitherto been unaware of the existence of such persons, and that he +would suffer none such to live under his jurisdiction. He had, for more +than a year, imposed upon his wife (despite Cardinal York's and her own +entreaties, if we may credit Sir Horace Mann) the title and etiquette of +a Queen, and had flaunted his scarlet liveries along the Corso day after +day, with no result save that of making the Roman nobles keep carefully +out of the way wherever he and his wife might go; nay, more, he had +replaced over the doorway of his residence the royal escutcheon of Great +Britain, only to return from the country one day and find that the +Pontifical police had taken it down during his absence. After this we +can understand, as I said, the disappointment and rage which must have +accumulated in his heart, and which, fifteen months after his wedding, +made him abandon the base town of the popes and seek sympathy and +dignity in the capital of Tuscany. But he was destined only to +further disappointment. The Grand Duke, Peter Leopold, the practical, +economical, priest-hating, paternally-meddlesome, bustlingly and +tyrannically-reforming son of Maria Theresa, was not the man to console +so mediaeval and antiquated and unphilosophical a thing as a Stuart. The +arrival, the presence of Charles Edward in Florence, was absolutely +ignored by the Court, and no invitations of any sort were sent out +either to King Charles III. or to the Count of Albany. Except the +Corsinis, old friends of the Stuarts, who had known Charles Edward in +his brilliant boyhood, and who politely placed at his disposal their +half-suburban palace or casino, opening on to the famous Oricellari +Gardens, no one seemed inclined to pay any particular respects to the +new-comers. There was, indeed, no pressure from the Government (as had +been the case in Rome), and the Florentine nobles, whose exclusiveness +and pride had been considerably diminished by the inroad of swaggering +Lorenese favourites under the Grand Duke Francis, and of cut and dry +Austrian officials under his son Peter Leopold, showed a sort of +lukewarm willingness to receive the Count and Countess of Albany on +equal terms into their society. But Charles Edward wanted royal honours; +he forbade his wife demeaning her queenly position by returning the +visits of Florentine ladies, and the nobles of the Tuscan Court +gradually left the would-be King and Queen of England to their own +resources. + +These resources, with the exception of receiving such few visitors as +might care to know them on unequal terms, and a dogged pushing into +notice in every place, promenade, theatre, or nobles' club, where no +invitation was required, these resources consisted on the part of +Charles Edward in the old, old consoler, the flask of Cyprus or bottle +of brandy, in the even grosser pleasures of excessive eating, the +indefatigable, assiduous courtship of his young wife, and the occasional +rows with his servants and acquaintances. The Count and Countess of +Albany appear to have inhabited the Casino Corsini until 1777, when they +sent for the greater part of the furniture of their Roman house, and +established themselves in a palace, bought of the Guadagnis and later +sold to the Duke of San Clemente, between the now suppressed Porta San +Sebastiano and the Garden of St. Mark's. In both these places Sir Horace +Mann, the vigilant Minister to the Tuscan Court and head spy over the +Stuarts in Italy, kept the Pretender well in sight; but, in fact, things +had now become so public that spying had grown unnecessary. Already, +the year following the removal from Rome to Florence, Sir Horace Mann +wrote to Walpole that the Pretender's health was giving way beneath his +excesses of eating and drinking; dyspepsia and dropsy were beginning, +and a sofa had been ordered for his opera-box, that he might conveniently +snooze through the performance. For neither drunkenness nor ailments +would induce Charles Edward to let his wife out of his sight for a +minute. His systematic jealousy may possibly have originated, as the +English Minister reports Charles Edward to have himself declared, from +fear lest there might attach to the birth of any possible heir of his +those doubts of legitimacy which are almost invariably the lot of a +pretender; but there can be no doubt that jealousy was an essential +feature of his character, in which it amounted almost to monomania. He +had caged his mistress long after he had ceased, by his own avowal, to +care for her; he now caged his wife, and with probably about as much or +as little affection. He had fenced up Miss Walkenshaw's bed with tables +and chairs fitted with bells which the slightest touch set ringing; +he now (and so early as 1775) barricaded all avenues to his wife's +room excepting the one through his own. Very soon, also, the gross +and violent language, the blows which had fallen to the lot of the +half-tipsy mistress, were to be shared by the virtuous and patient wife. + +[Illustration: LOUISE, COUNTESS OF ALBANY + _From a pastel once in the possession of the heirs of Fabre, now + in the possession of Mrs. Horace Walpole, of Heckfield Place, + Winchfield, Hants._] + +For virtuous and patient all accounts unite in showing the young +Countess of Albany to have been. In that corrupt Florence of the corrupt +eighteenth century, where every married woman was furnished, within two +years of her marriage, with an officially appointed lover who sat in her +dressing-room while she was finishing her toilet, who accompanied her +on all her visits, who attended her to balls and theatres, and, in fact, +entirely replaced, by the strict social necessities of the system of +cicisbeism, the husband, who was similarly employed about the wife +of another; in this society, where conjugal infidelity was a social +organisation supplemented by every kind of individual caprice of +gallantry; where women were none the worse thought of if they added +to the official _cavaliere servente_ a whole string of other lovers, +varying from the Cardinals of the Holy Church to the singers who +played women's parts, in powder and hoops, at the opera; in this world +of jog-trot immorality, where jealousy was tolerated in lovers, but +ridiculous in husbands, such a couple as the Count and Countess of +Albany was indeed a source of pity, wonder, and amazement. But if a +husband who barricaded his wife's room, never went out without her, nor +permitted her to go out without him, who was never further off than the +next room during the presence of any visitor, was a marvellous sight; +still more marvellous was a beautiful and charming woman of twenty-three +or twenty-four, who cast no glances of longing at the brilliant +cavaliers all round her, who consoled her dreary prison-hours with +reading hard enough for a professor at the university, and who showed +towards the peevish, violent, disgustingly-ailing old toper who +overshadowed her life with his presence nothing, as Horace Mann tells +us, but attention and tenderness. The fact is that Louise of Stolberg, +much as her subsequent life and ways of thought proved her to be a woman +of the eighteenth century, and not at all above the eighteenth century's +easy-going habits and conventional ideas, was a kind of woman rare at +all times and rarest of all in a time like her own, With a kindly and +affectionate temper, the immense bulk of her nature, the overbalance, the +top-heaviness of it, was intellectual; and intellectual not in the sense +of the ready society intelligence, so common among eighteenth-century +women, but in the sense of actual engrossing interest and in abstract +questions and ideals. The portraits done of her immediately after her +marriage show, as I have said, a remarkably childish person; and +childish, without much ballast of passion or even likings, the likeness +sketched by Bonstetten seems certainly to show her. But there are women +who, while immature as women and human beings, are precocious as +intellects, and in whom the character, instead of rapidly developing +itself by the force of its own emotions and passions, seems in a manner +to be called into existence by the intelligence: retarded natures, in +whom the thoughts seem to determine the feelings. Of this sort, I think, +we must imagine the Countess of Albany, if we would understand the +anomalies of her life: a person rather deficient in sensitiveness; +indifferent, light-hearted, in her girlhood; not rebelling against the +frightful negativeness of existence, the want of love, of youth, of +brightness, of all that a young girl can want in the early part of her +married life; not rebelling against the positive miseries, the constant +presence of everything that was mentally and physically loathsome in the +second period of this wedded slavery; a woman of cold temperament, and +even, you might say, of cold heart, and safe, safe in the routine of +duty and suffering, until a merely intellectual flame burst out, white +and cold, in her hitherto callous nature. A creature, so to speak, only +half awake, or awake, perhaps, only when she devoured her books and +tried to puzzle out her mathematical problems; and going through life by +the side of her jealous, brutal, sickly, drunken husband, in a kind of +somnambulistic indifferentism, perhaps not feeling her miseries very +acutely, and probably not envying other women their meaningless liberty, +their inane lovers, their empty wholeness of life. + +Thus the routine continued. The Count and Countess of Albany, cured +by this time of any affectation of royalty, had gradually got +domesticated in Florentine society. People began to go to their house, +the newly-bought palace in Via San Sebastiano. People came to the +opera-box where Charles Edward lay stretched, dozing or snoring, his +bottle of Cyprus wine by his side, on his sofa. It is easy to read +through the lines of Sir Horace Mann's pages of social tittle-tattle, +that Florence, frivolous and unintellectual and corrupt though it was, +and, perhaps, almost in proportion to its frivolity, emptiness, and +corruption, felt a strange sort of interest, experienced a vague, mixed +feeling, pity, fear, and general surprise and want of comprehension +towards this beautiful young woman, with her dazzling white complexion, +dark hazel eyes and blonde hair, her childish features grown, perhaps +not less young, but more serious and solemn for her five years of wasted +youth and endured misery, with her reputation for coldness, her almost +legendary eccentricities of intellectual interests. Women like this one +are apt to be regarded not so much with dislike and envy, as with the +mixed awe and pity which peasants feel towards an idiot, by frivolous +and immoral people like those powdered Florentines of a hundred years +ago, whose brocaded trains and embroidered coats have long since found +their way into the cupboards of curiosity shops, and been cut up into +quaint room decoration by aesthetically-minded foreigners; pity and awe +the more natural when, as in the case of Louise d'Albany, it is evident +to every man and woman, however heartless and stupid, that the creature +in question is a victim, and an innocent one. People were led, perhaps +to some extent by impertinent curiosity, by the lazy desire to have +some opinion to give upon that now legendary household of the besotten, +sleepy, nauseous old King of England and his terribly virtuous and +intellectual young Queen, to the palace in Via San Sebastiano; and men +and women of fashion led thither, as to one of the curious sights of +Florence, their country cousins and their distinguished visitors from +other parts. And thus, one day in the autumn of 1777, there was brought, +we know not by whom, half-curious and half-indifferent, to the _salon_ +of the Countess of Albany a certain very tall, thin, pale young man of +twenty-eight, with handsome, mobile, rather hard aquiline features, +choleric, flashing blue eyes, and a head of crisp, bright red hair; a +man of fashion, nattily dressed in the Sardinian uniform, but with +something strange, untamed, morose about his whole aspect which +contrasted singularly with the effete gracefulness and amiability of +young Florentine dandies. He had heard of the Countess of Albany's +eccentricities long before; she had doubtless heard of his. + +One can imagine the curiosity with which the wild, moody young officer +fixed those bright, hard, steel, flashing blue eyes upon the beautiful +young woman of whom he had heard that she was, what no woman of +his acquaintance (and his acquaintance was but too large) had +been--intellectual and virtuous. One can imagine the curiosity, much +vaguer and more indifferent, with which the woefully cold and woefully +weary young woman met the scrutiny of those hard, flashing blue eyes, +and took the moral measure of this eccentric creature, come from Turin +to Florence with some ten or twelve half-tamed horses, in order to learn +Tuscan grammar for the sake of writing tragedies. The common friend, +whose name has been engulfed into the unknowable, introduced to the +Countess of Albany Count Vittorio Alfieri. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +ALFIERI. + + +The childhood and early youth of Vittorio Alfieri had been strangely +vacant, dreary, one might almost say intellectually and morally sordid; +and the strangest, the dreariest circumstance about them was exactly +that this vacuity, this dreariness, this total want of all that can make +the life of a boy and of a young man pleasant to our fancy or attractive +to our sympathy, did not in the least depend upon any harshness or +stinginess of fate. Indeed, perhaps, no man had ever prepared for him +an easier existence; no man had ever less misfortune sent to him by +Providence, or less unkindness shown towards him by mankind, than this +constantly struggling, this pessimistic and misanthropic man. The only +son of Count Alfieri of Cortemiglia, of one of the richest and noblest +families of Asti in Piedmont, his early childhood was spent under the +care of his mother, a woman of almost saintly simplicity and kindness, +unworldly, charitable, devoted to her children, and to the poor of +the place; and of her third husband, also an Alfieri, who appears to +have been, in his affection and generosity towards his wife's children, +everything that a step-father is usually supposed not to be. Being +delicate in health, the boy was treated with every degree of consideration, +never worried with lessons, never exasperated with punishments, as long +as he remained at home. He was sent, under the care of an uncle, the +eminent architect, Benedetto Alfieri, who appears to have been the +ideally amiable uncle as Giacinto Alfieri had been the ideally amiable +step-father, to the academy or nobles' college at Turin, where again, +provided with plenty of money, and a most accommodating half-tutor, +half-valet, he enjoyed, or might have enjoyed, every advantage possible +to a young Piedmontese noble, either in the way of study or of idleness. +And, finally, when still in his teens, he had been supplied with ample +money, horses and fine clothes _ad libitum_, and almost unlimited +liberty to wander all over the world, from Naples to Holland, from +St. Petersburg to Cadiz, in search of experience or amusement. Nor +during those years of youthful wanderings, does he ever seem, except +upon one memorable occasion, to have been made to suffer from the +unconscientiousness, the harshness, the infidelity, the indifference of +the men and women whom he met, any more than in his boyhood he had +suffered from the severity of his masters, the brutality of his +tutor-servants, or the ill-nature of his fellow pupils. Fate and the +world were extremely kind to Vittorio Alfieri: giving him every +advantage and comfort, and teaching him no cruel lessons. But Vittorio +Alfieri was nevertheless one of the least happy of little boys, and one +of the least happy of young men. He was born with an uncomfortable +and awkward and unwieldy character, as some men are born lame, or +scrofulous, or dyspeptic. The child of a father over sixty, and of a +very young mother; there was in him some indefinable imperfection of +nature, some jar of character, or some great want, some original sin of +mental constitution, which made him different from other men, disabled +him from getting pleasure or profit out of the circumstances which gave +pleasure or profit to them; and turned his youth into a long period of +mental weakness and suffering, from which he recovered, indeed, by a +system of moral and intellectual cold water, meagre diet, and excessive +exercise, but only to remain for the rest of his days in a condition +of character absolutely analogous to the bodily condition of those +self-martyring invalids, who keep the gout down by taking exhausting +walks, eating next to no dinner, and filling the lives of others with +their excitable cantankerousness and gloomy forebodings. There was a +numbness and yet a sort of over-sensitiveness about his youth; a +strangeness which, without giving the least promise of superior genius, +merely made him less happy than other lads. + +The word numbness returns to my mind in connexion with this young +Alfieri; it certainly does not express the exact impressions left in me +by his own narrative of his boyhood and youth, and yet I can find no +better word: there was in him something like those irregularities of the +circulation due to dyspepsia, which, while making some part of the body, +say the head, throb and ache at the least sound, yet leave the whole man +dull, heavy, only half-awake. + +As a child he had vague and wistful cravings, untempered, unbeautified +by such imaginative visions as usually accompany the eccentric feelings +of such children as are subject to them. Obstinate and taciturn, he +tells us of the curious passion which he experienced for the little +choristers, boys of twelve or thirteen, whom he saw serving mass, or +heard singing the responses, in the Carmine Church at Asti. Silently, +painfully, he seems to have yearned for them in solitude; the daily +visit to the church where they shone out in their white surplices, +being the only pleasure in this black, blind little life of seven or +eight. Some physical ailment, some want of change and movement may have +underlain this morbid and sombre passionateness; and we learn that when +he was still a tiny boy, having heard that the poisonous hemlock was a +sort of grass which brought death, and with no clear notion what death +was, but with a vague longing for it, he gorged himself with grass out +of the garden, in the belief that there would be some hemlock in it. + +At school he learned nothing. The education given at the Academy of +Turin may, indeed, have been poor in quantity and quality; still it was +the best which a young Piedmontese nobleman could obtain, and Alfieri +himself confesses that of his school-fellows most came away with more +profit, and some afterwards became cultured and even learned men. He +learned nothing because he felt interest, emulation, curiosity about +nothing. His nature was still dull, dumb, dormant; and what he calls a +period of vegetation might more fitly be termed a moral and intellectual +hibernation. His school life is a weary, colourless, featureless part of +his autobiography. He would seem to have made neither friends nor +enemies. The tricks practised by or upon other school-boys are never +mentioned by him; never a practical joke, a lark, a scrape. Of his +intellectual tendencies, which were but little developed, we learn +only that he exchanged a copy of Ariosto, finally confiscated by the +authorities, for a certain number of helpings of chicken, relinquished +by him to its possessor; and that he bribed, with eatables also, a +certain other boy to tell him stories. + +The one incident which sheds light upon the lad's morbid constitution +or condition, which reveals that strange, apathetic obstinacy, that +_vis inertiae_ which was the spring even of his most decided actions in +after life, and which at the same time raises grave doubts in my mind +whether there may not have been an actual taint of insanity in this +extraordinary being, is the incident of his having submitted, rather +than give in after some misdemeanour, to being confined to his room in +the Academy for nearly three months at a stretch. Alfieri was fifteen; +he might have been let loose for the asking, since there was no real +severity in the school. He slept nearly all day long, rose in the +evening, but refused to let himself be combed or dressed, and lay for +hours on a mattress before the fire, cooking a squalid meal of _polenta_ +instead of his dinner, which he regularly sent down; receiving the +visits of his school-fellows without speaking or even moving; deaf and +dumb, as he describes himself, by the hour together, his eyes fixed on +the ground, brimful with tears, but never permitting himself to cry or +complain--a strange sort of savage animal rather than a human being. + +After leaving school at eighteen, he began his long series of journeys, +his series of passions for women and for horses, passions dull and +dumb, but violent, yet never such as to break through the spell of +inarticulateness which seemed to freeze his nature. Nothing more curious +can be fancied than his journeys. He went from place to place without +being attracted to any, without feeling the smallest interest in +anything which he saw, without contracting the faintest attachment for +any person or thing, driven along by a sort of fury of restlessness +and sombre vacuity. Many youths have doubtless been to the full as +indifferent as Vittorio Alfieri to all the objects of interest on their +road; but they have been so from frivolity and giddiness, and no one was +ever less frivolous or giddy than the young Alfieri. With no particular +purity of nature or principles of conduct to restrain him from vice, his +dissipation could yet scarcely be called dissipation, so little did it +wake up this lethargic, ailing, restless nature. Despite the furious +passion which he had for horses, and the hysterical, one might almost +say epileptic passions which he experienced for women, he remained +characterless, chaotic, only half alive. His many journeys gave him only +the negative pleasure of getting away from already known places, the +negative wisdom of seeing through a variety of things, military and +diplomatic distinctions and national prejudices. He remained joyless and +ignorant, and, what was worse, without longing for pleasure or desire +for knowledge. More than once kindly men of the world and scholars were +smitten with pity for this strange lad, in whom they could not but +recognise certain negative qualities rare in the eighteenth century--an +intense and cruel truthfulness, an absolute disinterestedness, a +constitutional contempt for all the vanities and baseness of the world. +They tried to talk to him, to lend him books, to awaken him out of this +dormouse sleep of the intellect, to break the spell which weighed him +down. All in vain. He continued his life of dull dissipation and dull +wanderings, through Italy, Germany, France, England, far into Spain, +Portugal, Russia, and even Finland. Periodic fits of depression and of +almost sordid avarice showed that he was still the same person as the +boy of fifteen who had spent those three months unwashed, unkempt, in +savage squalor, by his fireside; and fits of brutal and almost maniac +violence, as when, because a hair was sharply pulled out by the roots +during the elaborate process of frizzling, he cut open with a blow of a +heavy silver candlestick the temple of his faithful valet Elia, who had +nursed him like a mother, and whose only revenge, after this fearful +scene, was to keep the two handkerchiefs steeped with his blood as a +memorial and a warning to his master. + +Still, seeing nothing, learning nothing, taking interest in nothing, by +turns morosely apathetic and brutally violent, continually intriguing +with women, mercenary or depraved, Vittorio Alfieri had, at twenty-five, +less things to be proud of, but perhaps less also to regret as absolutely +dishonourable, than most young men of his time. He had never lied, never +seduced, never stooped to anything which seemed to him demeaning. He was +splashed with vice from head to foot, but he was neither unnerved nor +warped by it. A subject of constant gossip, of frequent scandal, with +his teams of half-tame horses, his flashy clothes, his furious passions +for worthless women, his moroseness and violence, he was still, so far, +a very negative character, a mere mass of rough material, out of which a +man might be made. But who should mould that matter? It is extremely +difficult to understand how it came about, as difficult almost as to +understand how a certain amount of inorganic molecules will sometimes +suddenly seem to obey an impulse from within, and become an organism, +a yeast plant, or a microscopic animal; but whether or not we succeed +in understanding the how and why of the phenomenon, the phenomenon +nevertheless took place; and this unorganised mass of passions called +Vittorio Alfieri, this chaotic thing without a higher life or a purpose +in the world, only partially sensitive, and seemingly quite impervious +to external influence, suddenly obeyed some inner impulse (perhaps some +accumulation of unnoticed effects from without), and organised itself +into a man, a thinker, and a writer. + +Alfieri had always been capable of contempt for others, and largely also +of contempt for himself: blind and dull, impulsive and indifferent by +turns, he had yet felt acutely the ignominy of certain excesses, whether +of avarice, or brutality, or love (if love it may be called), which +had ever and anon broken the monotony of his aimless life. Of these +ignominies the one he had felt most, perhaps because it deprived him of +the independence which even in his stupidest times he put his pride in, +was the ignominy of love; that is to say, of what love was to him, +unworthy incapacity of doing without a woman whom he despised and even +occasionally hated. The very fits of moral hysterics, nay, of moral St. +Vitus's dance, of which such love maladies largely consisted, sickened +him, degraded him in his own eyes like some disgusting physical infirmity. +In his twenty-second year he had such a love malady, he had been the +scandal of all London in an intrigue with a certain very lovely Lady +Ligonier, who, divorced by her husband for her guilt with the young +Italian, was on the point of being joyfully taken to wife by Alfieri when +it came out that before being his mistress she had been the mistress +of her own groom; a termination of the adventure which, much as it +distressed the writer of Alfieri's autobiography, is extremely +satisfactory to the reader. A few years later, after a variety of minor +love affairs, he became entangled at Turin in the nets of a Marchesa di +Prie, a rather faded Armida of very tarnished reputation, and whom +he thoroughly despised and even disliked at the very height of his +attachment. The struggles between his sense of weariness and degradation +and his unworthy love for this woman half wore him out, and brought on a +severe malady, from which he recovered only to swear he would never +enter her house again, and to return to it as soon as he could stand on +his feet. The beautiful social customs of eighteenth-century Italy +authorised and even imposed upon a man who had accepted the position of +_cavaliere servente_ (a sort of pseudo-platonic vice-husbandship which +covered illicit connections with a worldly propriety) to attend upon his +lady from the moment of her getting up in the morning to the moment when +she returned home or dismissed her guests at night, with only a few +intervals during which the lover might have his meals or pay his visits; +so, when the Marchesa di Prie fell ill of a malady which required +absolute repose and silence, Alfieri was bound to spend the whole +morning seated at the foot of her bed. During one of these weary +watches, it came into his head to kill time by scribbling some dramatic +scenes on loose sheets of paper, which he hid during the intervals of +his visits under the cushion of an arm-chair. A Piedmontese and a +thorough ignoramus, he had scarcely ever attempted to write even so +much as a letter in Italian; and as to a literary composition in any +language, such a thing had never occurred to him. The _Cleopatra_ thus +written in his lady's bed-room and secreted under the chair cushion, was +a most worthless performance, but it made Alfieri an author. Always +devoured by a desire to shine, hitherto by the excellence of his +get-up, the beauty of his person, and the number of his horses, it +suddenly flashed across him that he might shine in future as a +poet. This was the turning-point of his life, or what he called his +liberation. But, like a man bound in all his limbs, and who at length +has slipped the cord from off one hand, there still remained to Alfieri +an infinite amount of struggle, of bitter effort, of hopeless inaction, +before he could completely liberate himself from the bonds of sloth, of +worldly vanity, dissipation, and unworthy love, before he could step +forth and walk steadily along the new road which had appeared to him. +His ignorance was appalling. He could no longer construe a line of +Latin, he had not for months opened a book; and as to Italian, he knew +it no better than any Piedmontese street porter. His idleness, his habit +of absolute vacuity, was even worse; his desire to shine before the +frivolous women, the inane young men of Turin, nay, merely to have +himself, his well-cut coat, his well-frizzled hair, the horse he rode or +drove, noticed by any chance loafer in the street, was another almost +incredible obstacle; and, worst of all, there was his degrading serfdom +to a woman whom he knew he neither loved nor respected, and who had +never loved, still less respected, him. But Alfieri, once awakened out +of that strange long torpor of his youth, was able to put forth as +active and invincible forces all that extraordinary obstinacy, that +morose doggedness, that indifference to comfort and pleasure, that +brutal violence which had more than once, in their negative condition, +made him seem more like some wild animal or half-savage monomaniac +than an ordinary young man under five-and-twenty. He had, moreover, at +this moment, when all the energies of his nature suddenly burst out, a +power of deliberate, complacent, and pitiless moral self-vivisection, a +power of performing upon his character such cutting and ripping-open +operations as he thought beneficial to himself, which makes one think of +the abnormal faculty of enduring pain, the abnormal and almost cruel +satisfaction in examining the mechanism of one's own suffering, +occasionally displayed by hysterical women; and which brings back the +impression already conveyed by the morbid sensitiveness, the frenzied +violence, the moody torpor of his youth, that there was something +abnormal in Alfieri's whole nature. He was now employing that very +hysterical satisfaction in pain and impatience of half measures, to +reduce himself, by heroic means, to at least such moral and mental +health as would permit the full exercise of his faculties. There exists +a diary of his, written in 1777, which is an almost unique example +of the seemingly cold, but really excited and hysterical kind of +self-vivisection of which I have spoken. Alfieri had always been +extraordinarily truthful, not merely for his time and country, but +truthful quite beyond the limits of a mere negative virtue. But he was +also, what seems almost incompatible with this ferocious truthfulness, +excessively self-conscious and morally attitudinising, a thin-skinned +_poseur_. To reconcile these seemingly contradictory characteristics, to +become what he wished to appear, to pose as what he was, to make himself +up (if I may say so) as himself, to intensify what he recognised as his +main characteristics and efface all his other ones, now became to +Alfieri a sort of unconscious aim of life, closely connected with his +avowed desire to become a great poet; "the reason of which desire," he +himself wrote in his diary, "is my immoderate ambition, which, finding +no other field, has devoted itself entirely to literature." Nothing +can be more serious, as I have already remarked, than this diary of +Alfieri's struggles, where he notes, day by day, the laziness, the +meanness, the want of frankness to himself and others, the despicable +vanity, the attempt to appear what he is not, the indulged unfounded +suspiciousness towards his friends, all the little base defects which +must have pained a nature like his more than any real sinfulness, as the +prodding of a surgeon's instruments would have agonised such a man more +than an actual amputation. He narrates _in extenso_ all his vacillations +about nothing at all, all his givings way to laziness, all his insincere +confidences made to others. One morning is consumed in debating whether +or not he will buy a certain Indian walking-stick: "Torn by avarice and +the ambition of having it, I go away without deciding whether I will buy +it or not, yet I know full well that before two days are out I shall +have bought it. Seeking to understand this contradiction, I discover +a thousand ridiculous dirtinesses in my character (_mille ridicole +porcherie_)." Another day he notes down, after describing the mean envy +with which he has listened to the praises of another member of his +little club of dilettante authors: "I do believe that as much praise as +is being given and will ever be given to all mankind for every sort of +praiseworthy thing, I should like to snap up for myself alone." Again, +another day he writes: "More lazy than ever. Walking with a friend, and +talking about our incomes, &c. I thought I was giving him a perfectly +open account of my money matters; but, with the best intention of +telling him the truth, I find that, in order to deceive myself as well +as him, I increased my fortune by one-fifth." Again, "I had some doubts +whether, as it was blowing hard on the promenade, I would go on as far +as where the ladies were walking; because, knowing that I was looking +pale and ill, and that the wind had taken the powder out of my hair, I +was unwilling to show myself in a condition so unsuitable to my +pretensions to beauty." + +But while thus analyzing himself, while working at Latin and grammar +like a school-boy, this fashionable young man, ashamed of being seen when +he was not in good looks, ashamed of having one horse less than usual, +was continually ruminating over the glory for which he intended living, +and which he appears never for a moment to have doubted of attaining. +"In my mind, which is completely given up to the idea of glory, I +frequently go over the plan of my life. I determine that at forty-five +I will write no more, but merely enjoy the fame which I shall have +obtained, or imagine that I have obtained, and prepare myself for death. +One thing only makes me uneasy: I fear that as I approach the prescribed +limit, I may push it continually back, and that at forty-five I may +still be thinking only of continuing to live and, perhaps, of continuing +to scribble. Hard as I try to think, or to make others think, that I am +different from the rest of mankind, I fear, I tremble lest I be +extremely like them." + +But in order to devote himself to the pursuit of literary glory, one +thing remained to be achieved by this strange, self-conscious, frank, +contemptuous, and vain creature, by this young man who, even in his +weaknesses, has a certain heroic air about him. It was necessary to +break through the bonds of unworthy love. Unable to trust any longer to +his often baffled resolution and self-command, Alfieri devised a +primitive and theatrical remedy too much in harmony with his whole +nature to be otherwise than efficacious. The lady occupied a house in +the great rococo square of San Carlo, opposite to the one which he +rented; she could not go in or out of her door without being seen by +Alfieri, and the sight of her was too much for him: he invariably broke +all his resolves and went across the square to his Armida. Knowing this, +Alfieri obliged a friend of his to receive from him a solemn written +promise to the effect that he would not merely never go to the lady, nor +take any notice of her messages, but that, until he felt himself +absolutely indifferent and beyond her reach, he would go out only in +solitary places and at unlikely hours, and spend the greater part of the +day seated at his window looking at her house, seeing her pass, hearing +her spoken of, receiving her letters, without ever approaching her +or sending her the smallest message. As a pledge of this engagement, +Alfieri cut off his long red hair, and sent the plait to his friend, +leaving himself in a state of crop-headedness, which made it utterly +impossible, in that day when wigs had been given up but short hair had +not yet been adopted, for him to appear anywhere. And then he had +himself tied to his chair with ropes hidden under his cloak, and spent +day after day looking at his mistress' windows, quite unable to read a +word or attend to conversation, raging and sobbing and howling like a +demoniac, but never asking to be untied; until, at the end of a +fortnight or three weeks, he was rewarded, most characteristically, by +being at once delivered of all love for his lady, and inspired with the +idea for a sonnet. + +Alfieri worked harder and harder at his Latin and Italian lessons, +sketched out the plan of several plays: and, then, in the early summer +of 1776, got together his horses, procured a permission to travel from +the King of Sardinia, and set out for Tuscany in order to learn the +language in which he was to achieve that great literary glory to which +he had dedicated his life. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE CAVALIERE SERVENTE. + + +Alfieri's greatest terror in life was to fall in love once more. All his +love affairs had been degrading to his good sense, his will and his +manhood; they had been odious, even at the moment, to his extraordinary +innate passion, or, one might almost say, monomania for independence; +he who even in his dullest and most inane years had hated the thought +of any sort of military or diplomatic position which should imply +subjection to a despotic government, whose only strong feeling about the +world in general had long been a fierce hatred and contempt both for +those who tyrannised and those who were tyrannised over, this Alfieri +had always, as he tells us, fled, though unsuccessfully, from the +presence of women whose social position (though the words sound like a +sarcasm) was sufficiently good to make any regular love intrigue +possible or probable. How much more must he not defend his liberty now +that he saw before him the direct road to glory, and felt within himself +the power to journey along it. + +Thus it was, as he explains in his autobiography, that on his first +arrival in Florence, hearing everyone praising the character and talents +of the wife of Charles Edward Stuart, and seeing the beautiful young +woman at theatres and in the public promenade, he resolutely declined to +be introduced to her. The very charm of the impression which she had +thus accidentally made upon him, the vivid image of those very dark eyes +(I am translating his words, and must explain that her eyes, which +seemed blue to Bonstetten and dark to Alfieri's, were in reality of that +hazel colour which gives great prominence to the pupil, and therefore +leaves the idea of black eyes) contrasting with the brilliant fair skin +and pale blonde hair, of the graciousness and sweetness and perhaps even +a certain sad austerity in her whole appearance and manner,--all this +made Alfieri determine to avoid all personal acquaintance. + +But after some months at Siena, where his thoughts had been entirely +absorbed in the literary projects which he discussed with his new +friend, the grave and good and serious-minded Gori, and one or two +Sienese professors, after that first feeling of attraction had died +away, and he felt himself covered, as it were, with an impenetrable +armour of poetic interests, Alfieri decided, on his return to Florence, +that he was quite sufficiently of a new man to expose himself without +any danger to such a lady as the Countess of Albany. He was, after all, +a different individual from that inane, dull, violent young man who in +the vacuity of life had raged and roared in the chains of unworthy love. +And she, she also, was quite a different woman from the Lady Ligonier +and from the Marchesa di Prie, the shameless, unfaithful wives, and +heartless, vain, worldly coquettes who had made such havoc of his heart. +She was a cold, virtuous, extremely intellectual woman, trying to +find consolation for her quietly and bravely supported miseries in +study, in abstract interests which should take away her thoughts from +the sickening reality of things; a woman who would be valuable as a +friend to a poet, and who would know how to value his friendship. And +he, continually seeking for people who could understand his literary +ambitions, with whom he could discuss all his poetical projects, and +from whom he might receive assistance in this new intellectual life, +was he not in need of such a friendship? Would he not appreciate its +usefulness and uniqueness sufficiently to see that it did not turn to a +mere useless and demoralising love affair? There may also have been +something very reassuring to Alfieri's apprehensions in the knowledge +that he would be dealing, not with an Italian woman, accustomed and +almost socially obliged to hold a man in the degrading bonds of +cicisbeism, but with a foreigner, the jealously-guarded wife of a sort +of legendary ogre, with whom, however much the old fury of love might +awaken in him, there could by no possibility be anything beyond the most +strictly watched friendship. So Alfieri went to the palace of the Count +of Albany; and, having once been, returned there. + +The palace bought by Charles Edward about 1776 stands in the most remote +and peaceful quarter of Florence. A few quiet streets, unbroken by +shop-fronts and unfrequented by vehicles, lead up to that quarter; +streets of low white-washed convent walls overtopped by trees, of silent +palaces, of unpretending little houses of the seventeenth or eighteenth +century, from behind whose iron window-gratings and blistered green +shutters one expects even now, as one passes in the silence of the +summer afternoons, to hear the faint jangle of some harpsichord-strummed +minuet, the turns and sudden high notes of some long-forgotten song by +Cimarosa or Paisiello. It is a region of dead walls, over which bend +the acacias and elms, over which shoot up the cypresses and cedars +of innumerable convent and palace-gardens, on whose flower-beds and +fountains and quincunxes the first-floor windows look down. In the midst +of all this, at the corner of two very quiet streets, stands the palace, +now of the Duke of San Clemente, an ungainly, yellow structure of +various epochs, with a pretty late sixteenth-century belvedere tower on +one side; a lot of shuttered and heavily-grated seventeenth-century +windows, ornamented with stone stay-laces and tags, upon the dark +street; and to the back a desolate old garden, where the vines have +crawled over the stonework, and the grotesque seventeenth-century +statues, green and yellow with lichen, stand in niches among the +ill-trimmed hedges of ilex and laurel: the most old-world house and +garden in the old-world part of the town. The eighteenth century still +seems very near as we walk in those streets and look in, through the +railings, at the ilex and laurel quincunxes, the lichened statues of +that garden; and from the roof of the house still floats, creaking in +the wind, regardless of the triumph of the Hanoverians, unconscious of +the many banners which have been thrown, mere heaps of obsolete coloured +tatters, on the dust-heap, a rusty metal weather-vane, bearing the +initials of Carolus Rex, the last successor of the standard that was +raised in Glenfinnan. + +In this house was now developing one of the most singular loves that +ever were. Shortly after his introduction to the Countess of Albany, +Alfieri, terrified lest he might be forfeiting his spiritual liberty +once more, took to flight and tried to forget the lady in a mad journey +to Rome. But he had not forgotten her; and on his passage through Siena, +returning to Florence, he had explained his feelings, his fears, to +his friend Francesco Gori. This Gori, a young Sienese of the middle +class, extremely cultured, of "antique uprightness," to use the +eighteenth-century phrase, seems to have taken to his heart, as one +might some wild younger brother, or some eccentric, moody child, the +strange, self-engrossed, passionate Piedmontese. A gentle, grave, and +quiet man, he had loved the magnanimity and independence so curiously +mingled with mere vanity and egotism in Alfieri's nature; he had never +tired of hearing his friend's plans for the future, had never smiled at +his almost comic certainty of supreme greatness, he had never lost +patience with the self-meritorious egotism which made all Alfieri's +actions seem the one interest of the world in Alfieri's own eyes. To +Francesco Gori, therefore, Alfieri went for advice: ought he, or ought +he not, to fly from this new love while it was still possible to do so? + +The grave and virtuous Gori answered that he should not: this new love +had been sent to him as a cure for all baser loves; instead of crushing +it as an obstacle to his higher life and his glory, he should thankfully +cultivate it as an incentive and assistance in working out his +intellectual redemption. + +Let us pause, and consider for a moment the meaning of Alfieri's +question, and the meaning of Gori's answer; let us try and realise the +ideas and feelings of two honourable men, seeking a higher life, in a +country so near our own as Italy, and so short a while ago as the year +1777. Here was Alfieri, passionately desirous to redeem his own +existence by intellectual efforts, and confident of a vague mission to +awaken his countrymen to his own nobler feelings: to the contempt of +sensual pleasures and worldly vanities, the hatred of political and +religious servitude, the love of truth and justice, the love of Italy. +Here was this Alfieri, at the very outset of his new career, solemnly +confiding to his kindest and wisest friend the scruples, the fears, +which restrained him from seeking the company of a woman whom he was +beginning to love, and who was beginning to love him, a young woman +married by mere worldly convention to a sickly, brutal, and brutish +drunkard, old enough to be her father. And what were these scruples? +Merely that a new love might distract Alfieri from his plans of study +and work, that a woman might cheat him of glory, and Italy of the tragic +drama which would school her to virtue. That there could be any other +scruples appears never to have crossed Alfieri's brain: that there could +be any reason to pause and ask himself whether he was doing wrong or ill +before exposing to temptation the woman whom he loved, and the honour +which he loved more than her; whether he had a right to return to the +palace of Charles Edward and, while receiving his hospitality, while +enjoying his confidence, to teach the wife of his host how to love +another man than her husband; whether he had a right to return to the +presence of that beautiful and intellectual lady, who had hitherto +suffered only from the brutishness of her husband, and add to these +sufferings the sufferings of hopeless love, the sufferings of a guilty +conscience? + +But to the Italian of the eighteenth century, even to the man who most +thoroughly despised and loathed his country's and century's corruption, +no such scruple ever came. What consideration need any man or any woman +waste upon a husband? What possible disgrace could come to a woman +in having a lover? And did not the frantic jealousy of the besotted +old husband, his continual attendance, his perpetual spying, most +effectually remove any further consideration there might be for him? + +I scarcely know whether it is a thing about which to be cheerful or sad, +proud or ashamed; but the more one studies the ideas and feelings of +even one's nearest neighbours, in place or in time, the more is one +impressed with the sense that, say what people choose, men and women do +not think and feel, even upon the most important subjects, in anything +like a uniform manner. Social misarrangements, which are crimes towards +the individual, are invariably partially righted, made endurable, by +individual rearrangements, which are crimes towards society. The woman +was not consulted by her parents before her marriage, she was not +restrained by her conscience afterwards; she was given for ambition to a +man whose tenure of her received legal and religious sanction; she gave +herself for love to a man whose possession of her was against society +and against religion; but society received her to its parties, and the +Church gave her its communion. And thus, in Italy, and in the eighteenth +century, where no one had found any fault at a girl of nineteen being +married by proxy to a man who turned out to be a disgusting and brutal +sot; no one also could find any fault at a young man of twenty-eight +seeking, and obtaining, the love of a married woman of twenty-five. The +immoral law had produced the immoral lawlessness. So, to the scruples +of Alfieri, Francesco Gori had answered: "Return to Florence." + +We shall now see how, out of this vile piece of prose, the higher nature +of Alfieri and of the Countess of Albany, and (what a satire upon poetic +and platonic affection!) most of all, the monomaniac jealousy of Charles +Edward, contrived to make a sort of poetry. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +THE ESCAPE. + + +Alfieri's fears had been groundless. His love for the wife of Charles +Edward Stuart--a love, he tells us, quite different from any he had +previously experienced, quiet, pure, and solemn--was destined not to +interfere with that austere process of detaching his soul from the base +passions of the world, and devoting it to the creation of a new style +of poetry, to the achievement of a new kind of glory; nay, rather, +by bringing to the surface whatever capacity for tenderness and +self-restraint and respect for others had hitherto lurked within this +fantastic nature, this new love helped to complete that strange +monumental personality of Alfieri--a personality more striking, more +ideal, than any of those plays by which he hoped to regenerate Italy, +and which has been far more potent than his works in the moral +regeneration of his country. Alfieri's youth had been illiterate and +stupid; and he required, in order to make up for so much waste of time +and waste of spirit, that he should now be surrounded by an atmosphere +as intensely intellectual as the atmosphere in which he had previously +lived had been the reverse. After the long spiritual numbness of his +earlier years, this soul, if it was to be kept alive, must be kept in an +almost artificially high spiritual temperature, and continually plied +with spiritual cordials. These advantages he obtained in the love, or, +we ought rather to say, the friendship of the Countess of Albany, and it +is extremely improbable whether he would have obtained them otherwise. +Irritable and vain and moody, at once excessively persuaded of his own +dramatic mission and morbidly diffident of his actual powers of carrying +it out, contemptuous of others and of himself, Alfieri, who required +such constant sympathy and encouragement in his work, was not the +man who could hope to obtain much of either from other men, whom +his excessive pretensions, his ups and downs of humour, his very +dissatisfaction with himself, must have quickly exhausted of the small +amount of brotherly tenderness which seems to exist in the literary +brotherhood. He did, indeed, meet a degree of sincere helpfulness and +friendliness from the members of the Turinese Literary Club; from +Cesarotti, the translator of _Ossian_; from Parini, the great Milanese +satirist, and from one or two other men of letters; which shows that +there is more kindness in the world than he ever would admit, and +confirms me in my remark that he was singularly well treated by fate +and mankind. But all this was very lukewarm sympathy; and except from +his two great friends, Francesco Gori and Tommaso di Caluso, a +difficult-tempered man like Alfieri could receive only lukewarmness. +Now what he required was sympathy, admiration, adoration, of the most +burning description. This was possible, towards such a man, only +from a woman. But where find the woman who could give it, among the +convent-educated, early corrupted, frivolous ladies of Italy, to whom +love-making was the highest interest in life, but an interest only a +trifle higher than card-playing, dancing, or dressing? Where, even among +the very small number of women like Silvia Verza at Verona, Isabella +Albrizzi at Venice, or Paolina Castiglione at Milan, who actually had +some amount of culture, and actually prided themselves on it? The rank +and file of Italian ladies could give him only another Marchesa di Prie, +a little better or a little worse, another woman who would degrade +him in the sensual and inane routine of a _cicisbeo_. The exceptional +ladies were even worse. Fancy this morbid, conceited, self-doubtful, +violent, moody Alfieri accepting literary sympathy in a room full of +small provincial lions--sympathy which had to be divided with half a +dozen others; learned persons who edited Latin inscriptions, dapper +poet priestlets, their pockets crammed with sonnets on ladies' hats, +opera-singers, canary birds, births, deaths, and marriages, and +ponderous pedants of all sorts and descriptions. Why, a lady who set +up as the muse of a hot-tempered and brow-beating creature like +Alfieri, a man whom consciousness of imperfect education made horribly +sensitive--such a lady would have lost all the accustomed guests of her +_salon_ in ten days' time. Herein, therefore, consisted the uniqueness +of the Countess of Albany, in the fact that she was everything to +Alfieri, which no other woman could be. Originally better educated than +her Italian contemporaries, the ex-canoness of Mons, half-Flemish, +half-German by family, French by training, and connected with England +through her marriage with the Pretender, had the advantage of open +doors upon several fields of culture. She could read the books of four +different nations--a very rare accomplishment in her day; and she was, +moreover, one of those women, rarer even in the eighteenth century than +now-a-days, whose nature, while unproductive in any particular line, is +intensely and almost exclusively intellectual, and in the intellectual +domain even more intensely and almost exclusively literary--women who +are born readers, to whom a new poem is as great an excitement as a new +toilette, a treatise of philosophy (we shall see the Countess devouring +Kant long before he had been heard of out of Germany) more exquisitely +delightful than a symphony. And this woman, thus educated, with this +immense fund of intellectual energy, was living, not a normal life with +the normal distracting influences of an endurable husband, of children +and society, but a life of frightful mental and moral isolation, by the +side, or rather in the loathsome shadow, of a degraded, sordid, violent, +and jealous brute, from the reality of whose beastly excesses and +bestial fury, of whose vomitings and oaths and outrages and blows, she +could take refuge only in the unreal world of books. + +With such a woman, Alfieri, accepted as an intimate by the husband, who +doubtless thought one hare-brained poet more easy to manage than two or +three fashionable gallants--with such a woman as this, Alfieri might +talk over plans of self-culture and work, his plays, his essays on +liberty and literature, and all the things by which he intended to +redeem Italy and make himself immortal, without any fear of his listener +ever growing weary; from her he could receive that passionate sympathy +and encouragement without which life and work were impossible to him. +For we must bear in mind what a man like Alfieri, in the heyday of his +youth, his beauty, and that genius which was the indomitable energy and +independence of his nature, must have been in the eyes of the Countess +of Albany. She had been married at nineteen--she was now twenty-six: in +those seven years of suffering there had been ample time to obliterate +all traces of the frivolous, worldly girl whom Bonstetten had seen +light-heartedly laughing at her old husband's jokes; there had been +plenty of time to produce in this excessively intellectual nature that +vague dissatisfaction, that desire for the ideal, which is the price too +often paid for the consolation of mere abstract and literary interests. +The pressure of constant disgust and terror at her husband's doings, the +terrible mental and moral solitude of living by such a husband's side, +had probably wrought up Louise d'Albany to the very highest and almost +morbid refinement of nature--a refinement far surpassing the normal +condition of her character, even as the extra fining off of already +delicate features by illness will make them surpass by far their healthy +degree of beauty. In such a mental condition the sense of what her +husband was must have exasperated her imagination quite as much as his +actual loathsomeness must have repelled her feelings; the knowledge of +the frightful moral and intellectual fall of Charles Edward must have +been as bad as the filthy place to which he had fallen. And opposite to +the image of the Pretender must constantly have arisen the image of +Alfieri--opposite to the image of the man, once heroic and charming and +brilliant, who had sold his heroism and his charm, his mind and his +manhood, for the bestial pleasure of drink--who had rewarded the +devotion and self-sacrifice and noble enthusiasm of his followers +by the sight, worse than the scaffold on Tower Hill, of their idol +turning into a half-maniac, besotted brute; opposite to this image of +degradation must have arisen the image of the man who had wrestled with +the baser passions of his nature, who had broken through the base habits +of his youth, who had fashioned himself into a noble moral shape as the +marble is fashioned by the hand of the sculptor; who was struggling +still, not merely with the difficulties of his art, but with whatever he +thought mean and slothful in himself. + +Some eighteen months after their first acquaintance, Alfieri announced +to the wife of Charles Edward that he had just happily settled a most +important piece of business, the success of which was one of the most +fortunate things of his life. He had made a gift of all his estates to +his sister, reserving for himself only a very moderate yearly income; he +had reduced himself from comparative wealth to comparative poverty; he +had cut himself off from ever making a suitable marriage; he had made +himself a pensioner of his sister's husband: but at this price he had +bought independence--he was no longer the subject of the King of +Sardinia, nor of any sovereign or State in the world. + +The passion for political liberty, the abhorrence of any kind of +despotism, however glorious or however paternal, had grown in Alfieri +with every journey he had made through France, Spain, Germany, +Russia--with every sojourn in England; it had grown with every page of +Livy and Tacitus, with every line of Dante and Petrarch which he had +read; it had grown with every word that he himself had written. He had +determined to be the poet who should make men ashamed of being slaves +and ashamed of being tyrants. But he was himself the subject of the +little military despotism of Piedmont, whose nobles required, every +time they wished to travel or live abroad, to beg civilly for leave of +absence, which was usually most uncivilly granted; and one of whose laws +threatened any person who should print books in foreign countries, and +without the permission of the Sardinian censor, with a heavy fine, and, +if necessary, with corporal chastisement. + +In order to become a poet, Alfieri required to become a free agent; and +the only way to become a free agent, to break through the bars of what +he called his "abominable native cage," the only way to obtain the power +of writing what he wished to write, was to give up all his fortune, and +live upon the charity of the relatives whom he had enriched. So, during +the past months, he had been in constant correspondence with his sister, +his brother-in-law, and his lawyer; and now he had succeeded in ridding +himself of all his estates and all his capital. The Countess of Albany +knew Alfieri sufficiently well by this time to understand that this +alienation of all his property was a real sacrifice. Alfieri was the +vainest and most ostentatious of men; young, handsome, showy and +eccentric, accustomed to cut a grand figure wherever he went, it must +have cost him a twinge to be obliged to reduce his hitherto brilliant +establishment, to dismiss nearly all his servants, to sell most of his +horses, to exchange his embroidered velvets and satins for a plain black +coat for the evening, and a plain blue coat for the afternoon. The worst +sacrifice of all he doubtless confided, with savage bitterness, to the +Countess, as he confided it to the readers of his autobiography, it was +to resign the nominal service of Piedmont--to put aside, for good and +all, that brilliant Sardinian uniform in which he looked to such +advantage. We can imagine how this subject was talked over--how Alfieri, +with that savage pleasure of his in the self-infliction of pain and +humiliation, exposed to the Countess all the little, mean motives which +had deterred him or which had encouraged him in his liberation from +political servitude; we can imagine how she chid him for his rash step, +and how, at the same time, she felt a delicious pride in the meanness +which he so frankly revealed, in the rashness which she so severely +reproved; we can imagine how the thought of Alfieri, who had thus +sacrificed fortune, luxury, vanity, to the desire to be free, met in the +Countess of Albany's mind the thought of Charles Edward, living the +pensioner of a sovereign who had insulted him and of a sovereign whom he +had cheated, spending in liquor the money which France had paid him to +get himself an heir and the Stuarts another king. + +A strange and dangerous situation, but one whose danger was completely +neutralised. Of all the various persons who speak of the extraordinary +friendship between Vittorio Alfieri and Louise d'Albany which existed at +this time, not one even ventures to hint that the relations between +them exceeded in the slightest degree the limits of mere passionate +friendship; and the solemn words of Alfieri, in whom truthfulness was +not merely an essential part of his natural character, but an even more +essential part of his self-idealised personality, merely confirm the +words of all contemporary writers. Now, if there was a country where an +intrigue between a woman noted for her virtue and a poet noted for his +eccentricity would, had it existed, have been joyfully laid hold of by +gossip, it was certainly this utterly-demoralised Italy of _cavalieri +serventi_: every fashionable woman and every fast man would have felt a +personal satisfaction in tearing to pieces the reputation of a lady +whose whole character and life had been a censure upon theirs. But, as +there are women the intensity of whose pure-mindedness, felt in every +feature and gesture and word, paralyses even the most ribald wish to +shock or outrage, and momentarily drags up towards themselves the very +people who would dearly love to drag them down even for a second; so +also it would appear that there are situations so strange, meetings of +individuals so exceptional, that calumny itself is unable to attack +them. No one said a word against Alfieri and the Countess; and Charles +Edward himself, jealous as he was of any kind of interference in his +concerns, appears never to have attempted to rid himself of his wife's +new friend. + +Much, of course, must be set down to the very madness of the Pretender's +jealousy, to his more than Oriental systematic guarding and watching of +his wife. Mann, we must remember, had written, long before Alfieri +appeared upon the scene, that Charles Edward never went out without his +wife and never let her go out without him; he barricaded her apartment, +and was never further off than the next room. Charles Edward undoubtedly +conferred upon two people, living in a day of excessive looseness of +manners, the inestimable advantage of confining their love within the +bounds of friendship, of crushing all that might have been base, of +liberating all that could be noble, of turning what might have been +merely a passion after the pattern of Rousseau into a passion after the +pattern of Dante. But what Charles Edward could not do, what no human +being or accidental circumstances could bring about, was due to the +special nature of Alfieri and of the Countess; namely, that this strange +platonic passion, instead of dying out after a very brief time, merely +intensified, became long-lived, inextinguishable, nay continued, in its +absolute austerity and purity, long after every obstacle and restraint +had been removed, except the obstacles and restraints which, from the +very ideality of its own nature, increased for itself. And, if we look +facts calmly in the face, and, letting alone all poetical jargon, ask +ourselves the plain psychological explanation, we see that such things +not only could, but, considering the character of the Countess of Albany +and of Alfieri, must have been. The Countess had found in Alfieri the +satisfaction of those intellectual and ideal cravings which in a nature +like hers, and in a situation like hers, must have been the strongest +and most durable necessities. Alfieri, on the other hand, sick of his +past life, mortally afraid of falling once more under the tyranny of his +baser nature, seeking on all sides assistance in that terrible struggle +of the winged intellect out of the caterpillar cocoon in which it had +lain torpid so long, was wrought up, if ever a man was, to the pitch of +enjoying, of desiring a mere intellectual passion just in proportion as +it was absolutely and completely intellectual. + +A poet especially in his conception of his own personality, an artist +who manipulated his own nature, a _poseur_ whose _pose_ was his +concentrated self cleared of all things which recalled the vulgar herd; +moreover, a furiously literary temper with a mad devotion to Dante and +Petrarch: Alfieri must have found in this love, which fate in the +Pretender's person ordained to be platonic, the crowning characteristic +of his present personality, the almost miraculous confirmation of his +mystic relationship to the lover of Beatrice and the lover of Laura. +And, in the knowledge of what he was to this poor, tormented young +wife; in the consciousness of being the only ray of light in this +close-shuttered prison--nay, rather bedlam-like existence; in the sense +of how completely the happiness of Louise d'Albany depended upon +him, whatever there was of generous and dutiful in the selfish and +self-willed nature of Alfieri must have become paramount, and enjoined +upon him never to vacillate or grow weary in this strange mixture of +love and of friendship. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +ROME. + + +This strange intellectual passion, the meeting, as it were, of two +long-repressed, long solitary intellectual lives, austerely satisfied +with itself and contemptuous of all baser loves, might have sufficed for +the happiness of two such over-wrought natures as were at that moment +Vittorio Alfieri and Louise d'Albany. + +But there could be no happiness for the wife of the Pretender, and no +happiness, therefore, for the man who saw her the daily victim of the +cantankerousness, the grossness and the violence of her drunken husband. +To an imaginative mind, loving in things rather the ideal than the +reality, striving for ever after some poetical or heroic model of love +and of life, trying to be at once a patriot out of Plutarch and a +lover after the fashion of the _Vita Nuova_, there are few trials more +exasperating than to have to see the real creature who for the moment +embodies one's ideal, the creature whom one carefully garlands with +flowers and hangs round with lamps, raised above all vulgar things in +the niche in one's imagination, elbowed by brutish reality, bespattered +with ignoble miseries. And this Alfieri had constantly to bear. +Perhaps the very knowledge of the actual suffering, of the unjust +recriminations, the cruel violence, the absolute fear of death, among +which Louise d'Albany spent her life, was not so difficult for her lover +to bear as to see her, the beautiful and high-minded lady of his heart, +seated in her opera box near the sofa where the red and tumid-faced +Pretender lay snoring, waking up, as Mann describes him, only to summon +his lacqueys to assist him in a fit of drunken sickness, or to be +carried, like a dead swine, with hanging bloated head and powerless +arms, down-stairs to his carriage; not so difficult to bear as to hear +her, his Beatrice, his Laura, made the continual victim of her bullying +husband's childish bad-temper, of his foul-mouthed abuse, to hear it and +have to sit by in silence, dependent upon the good graces of a besotted +ruffian against whom Alfieri's hands must have continually itched. + +A little poem, poor, like all Alfieri's lyrics, written about this time, +and complaining of having to see a beautiful pure rose dragged through +ignoble filth, shows that Alfieri, like most poetical minds, resented +the vulgar and the disgusting much more than he would have resented what +one may call clean tragedy. But things got worse and worse, and the real +tragedy threatened. Charles Edward had outraged and beaten his mistress; +older and much more profoundly degraded, he now outraged and beat his +wife. In 1780 Sir Horace Mann reports upon the "cruel and indecent +behaviour" of which Mme. d'Albany was the victim. Ill-treatment and +terror were beginning to undermine her health, and there can be no +doubt, I think, that the symptoms of a nervous disorder, of which she +complained a couple of years later to Alfieri's bosom friend Gori, must +originally have been produced in this unusually robust young woman by +the horrible treatment to which she was at this time subjected. Mme. +d'Albany, who had astonished the world by her resignation, appears to +have fairly taken fright; she wrote to her brother-in-law Cardinal +York, entreating him to protect her from her husband. The weak-minded, +conscientious cardinal was not the man to take any bold step; he promised +his sister-in-law all possible assistance if she were driven to +extremities, but begged her to endure a little longer and save him the +pain of a scandal. So the Countess of Albany, long since abandoned by +her own kith and kin, abandoned also by her brother-in-law, alone in the +world between a husband who was daily becoming more and more of a wild +beast, and a lover who was fearful of giving any advice which might +compromise her reputation or separate them for ever, went on suffering. + +But the moment came when she could suffer no more. At the beginning of +the winter of 1780, the celebration of St. Andrew's day by Charles +Edward and his drinking companions, was followed by a scene over which +Alfieri drops a modest veil, calling it vaguely a violent bacchanal +which endangered the life of his lady. From the biographers of Charles +Edward we learn that the Pretender roused his wife in the middle of +the night with a torrent of insulting language which provoked her to +vehement recriminations; that he beat her, committed foul acts upon her, +and finished off with attempting to choke her in her bed, in which he +would probably have succeeded had the servants not been waked by the +Countess's screams and dragged Charles Edward away.[1] + +Alfieri, partly from an honourable reluctance to see his lady made the +heroine of a public scandal, and partly, no doubt, from the more selfish +fear lest a separation from her husband might imply a separation also +from her lover, had long persisted in advising the Countess against any +extreme measure. Alfieri tells us that with the desire for freedom of +speech and writing at the bottom of his act of self-spoliation in his +sister's favour, there had mingled a sense also that by breaking all +connections with Piedmont, and liberating himself from all temptation of +marrying for the sake of his family, he was, in a manner, securing the +continuation of his relations with Mme. d'Albany. The Countess's flight +from her husband, they both well knew, would in all probability put an +end to these relations; the Catholic Church could grant no divorce, and +Charles Edward would probably refuse a separation; so that the honour, +nay, the life of the fugitive wife would be safe only in a convent, +whence Alfieri would be excluded together with Charles Edward. The +choice was a hard one to make; the choice between a life of peace and +safety, but separated from all that made life dear to her, and a life +consoled by the presence of Alfieri, but made wretched and absolutely +endangered by the violence of a drunken maniac. But after that frightful +night of St. Andrew no choice remained; to remain under the Pretender's +roof was equivalent for his wife either to a violent death in another +such fit of madness, or to a lingering death from sheer misery and daily +terror. The Countess of Albany must leave her husband. + +To effectuate this was the work of Alfieri--of Alfieri, who, of all +men, was most interested to keep Mme. d'Albany in her husband's house; +of Alfieri, who, of all men, was the least fitted for any kind of +underhand practices. The actual plot for escape was the least part of +the business; the conspiracy would have utterly miscarried, and Mme. +d'Albany have been condemned to a life of much worse agony, had not +provision been made against the Pretender's certain efforts to get his +wife back. Mme. d'Albany may have remembered how her mother-in-law +Clementina Sobieska, although protected by the Pope, had been eventually +got out of the convent whither she had escaped, and had been restored +to her husband the Pretender James; she was probably aware, also, +how Charles Edward had stormed at the French Government to have Miss +Walkenshaw sent back to him from the convent at Meaux. No Government +could give a man back his mistress, but it was different with a wife; +and both Alfieri and the Countess must have known full well that +however lax the Grand Ducal Court might be on the subject of conjugal +infidelity, when quietly carried on under the domestic roof and +dignified by the name of _serventismo_, no court, no society, could do +otherwise than virtuously resent so great a turpitude as a wife publicly +running away by herself from her husband's house. It became necessary to +win over the sympathies of those in power, to secure their connivance, +or at all events their neutrality; and this task of talking, flattering, +wheedling, imploring, fell to Alfieri, whose sense of self-debasement +appears to have been mitigated only by the knowledge that he was working +for the good of a guiltless and miserable woman, of the woman whom he +loved more than the whole world; by the bitter knowledge that the +success of his efforts, the liberation of his beloved, meant also the +sacrifice of that intercourse which made the happiness of his life. + +Alfieri succeeded; the Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess were won over. +The actual flight alone remained to be accomplished. + +[2]In the first days of December 1780 a certain Mme. Orlandini, a +half Irish lady connected with the Jacobite Ormonds, was invited to +breakfast at the palace in the Via San Sebastiano. She skilfully led +the conversation into a discussion on needle-work, and suggested that +the Countess of Albany should go and see the last embroidery produced +at the convent of Bianchette, a now long-suppressed establishment in +the adjoining Via del Mandorlo. The Countess of Albany ordered her +carriage for immediately after breakfast, and the two ladies drove off, +accompanied, of course, by Charles Edward, who never permitted his wife +to go out without him. Near the convent-gate they met a Mr. Gahagan, an +Irish Jacobite and the official _cavaliere servente_ of Mme. Orlandini, +who, hearing that they were going to pay a visit to the nuns, offered to +accompany them. Gahagan helped out the Countess and Mme. Orlandini, who +rapidly ran up the flight of steps leading to the convent door; he then +offered his arm to Charles Edward, whose legs were disabled by dropsy. +Leaning on Gahagan's arm, the Pretender was slowly making his way up the +steps when his companion, looking up, suddenly exclaimed that the two +ladies had already entered the convent and that the nuns had stupidly +and rudely shut the door in his and the Count of Albany's face. "They +will soon have to open," answered Charles Edward, and began to knock +violently. Mr. Gahagan doubtless knocked also. But no answer came. At +length the door opened, and there appeared behind a grating no less a +person than the Lady Abbess, who ceremoniously informed the Count that +she was unable to let him in, as his wife had sought an asylum in her +convent under the protection of Her Highness the Grand Duchess of +Tuscany. + +Sir Horace Mann says that Alfieri, who is not mentioned in the very +circumstantial narrative of Dutens, was hanging about the convent, +in order to prevent the Pretender, who always carried pistols in his +pockets, from committing any violence. This seems extremely unlikely, +as the first use to which Charles Edward would naturally have put +his pistols would have been shooting Alfieri, for whose murder he +immediately offered a thousand sequins. At any rate, raging like a +maniac, the discomfited husband went back to his empty house. + +It would be pretty and pathetic to insert in this part of my narrative a +page of half-condemnatory condolence with Charles Edward. But this I +find it perfectly impossible to do. Of course, if we call to mind +Falkirk and Skye, if we conjure up in our fancy the Prince Charlie who +still lived in the thoughts of Flora MacDonald, there is something very +frightful in this tragi-comic flight of the Countess of Albany: the +slamming of that convent door in his face is the worst injury, the worst +injustice, the worst ignominy reserved by fate for the last of the +unhappy Stuarts. + +But of the Charles Edward of the Forty-five there remained so little in +this Count of Albany that we have no right to consider them any longer +as one individual, to condone the brutishness of the Count of Albany for +the sake of the chivalry of Prince Charles, to degrade our conception of +the young man by tacking on to it the just ignominy inflicted upon the +old man, the man who had inherited his name and position, but scarcely +his personality. Above all, we have no right to add to whatever reproaches +we may think fit to shower upon the Countess of Albany and on Alfieri, +the imaginary reproach that the husband whose rights they were violating +was the victor of Gladsmuir and Falkirk. + +There must always be something which shocks us in the behaviour, +however otherwise innocent and decorous, of a woman who runs away +from her husband with the assistance of her lover; but this quality of +offensiveness is not, in such a case as the present one, a fault of +the woman: it is one of her undeserved misfortunes, as much as is the +bad treatment, the solitude, the temptation, to which she has been +subjected. The evil practice of the world, its folly and wickedness in +permitting that a girl like Louise of Stolberg should be married to a +man like Charles Edward, its injustice and cruelty in forbidding the +legal breaking of such an unrighteous contract; the evil practice of the +world which condemned the Countess of Albany to be for so much of her +life an unhappy woman, also condemned her to be in some of her actions a +woman deserving of blame. We shall see further on how, in the attempt to +work out their happiness in despite of the evil world in which they +lived, the Countess and Alfieri, infinitely intellectually and morally +superior to many of us whom circumstances permit to live blameless and +comfortable, were splashed with the mud of unrighteousness, which was +foreign to their nature, and remained spotted in the eyes of posterity. + +Charles Edward did what he had done once before in his life: he applied +to the Government to put him again in possession of the woman whom he +had victimised; but as the French Government had refused to recognise +his claims over his fugitive mistress, so the Government of the Grand +Duke of Tuscany now refused to give him back his fugitive wife. The +Countess of Albany had naturally taken no clothes with her in her +flight; and she presently sent a maid to the palace in Via San Sebastiano +to fetch such things as she might require. But Charles Edward would not +permit a single one of her effects to be touched; if she wanted her +clothes and trinkets, she might come and fetch them herself. However, +after a few days, a message came from the Pope, ordering the Pretender +to supply his wife with whatever she might require; a threat to suspend +the pension was probably expressed or implied, for Charles Edward +immediately obeyed. + +Meanwhile, the Countess of Albany was anxiously awaiting at the convent +of the Bianchette a decision from her brother-in-law, to whom she had +written immediately after her flight. Those first days must have been +painfully unquiet. What if the Tuscan Court should listen to the Count +of Albany's entreaties? What if Cardinal York should take part with his +brother? Return to the house of her husband would be death or worse +than death. Cardinal York answered immediately: a long, kind, rather +weak-minded letter, the ideal letter of a well-intentioned, rather +silly priest, in curious Anglo-Roman French. He informed her that for +some time past he had expected to hear of her flight from her husband; +he protested that he had had no hand in her unhappy marriage, and begged +her to believe that it had been out of his power to protect her. He had +informed the Pope of the whole affair, and with His Holiness' approval +had prepared for his sister-in-law a temporary asylum in the Ursuline +convent in Rome, whither he invited her to remove as soon as possible. +In January 1781 the Countess of Albany, accompanied by a Mme. de Marzan, +who appears to have formed part of her household, and two maids, started +for Rome; but such had been the threats of Charles Edward, and his +ravings to get his wife back, that Alfieri and Gahagan, armed and +dressed as servants, accompanied the carriage a considerable part of its +way. The Pretender, we must remember, had offered a thousand sequins to +anyone who would kill Alfieri; and even in that humdrum late eighteenth +century a man of position might easily hire a couple of ruffians to +waylay a carriage and kidnap a woman. + +The Countess of Albany was installed in the Ursuline convent in Via +Vittoria, a street near the Piazza di Spagna. A gloomy family memory +hung about the place: it had been the asylum of Clementina Sobieska when +she had fled from the elder Pretender as Louise d'Albany had fled from +the younger. But the wife of Charles Edward was in a very different mood +from the wife of James III.; and it is probable that, despite the many +charms of the convent, and the excellent manners of its aristocratic +inmates, upon which Cardinal York had laid great store, the Countess, +with her heart full of the thought of Alfieri, was not at all inclined +to give her pious brother-in-law the satisfaction, which he apparently +expected, of developing a sudden vocation for Heaven. + +She had left Florence at the end of the year; in the spring she saw +Alfieri again. The quiet work which had seemed so natural and easy while +he was sure of seeing his lady every day, had become quite impossible to +him. He felt that he ought to remain in Florence, that he ought not to +follow her to Rome. But Florence had become insufferable to him; and +he determined to remove to Naples, because to get to Naples it was +necessary to pass through Rome. The melancholy barren approach to the +Eternal City, which, three years before, had inspired Alfieri with +nothing but melancholy and disgust, now seemed to him a sort of earthly +paradise; and Rome, which he hated, as the most delightful of places. +He hurried to the Ursuline convent, and was admitted to speak to the +Countess of Albany. "I saw her," he wrote many years later, "but (O God! +my heart seems to break at the mere recollection) I saw her a prisoner +behind a grating; less tormented than in Florence, but yet not less +unhappy. We were separated, and who could tell how long our separation +might not last? But, while crying, I tried to console myself with the +thought that she might at least recover her health, that she would +breathe freely, and sleep peacefully, no longer trembling at every +moment before the indivisible shadow of her drunken husband; that she +might, in short, live." + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +ANTIGONE. + + +About three months after the Countess of Albany's flight from her +husband, the Pope granted her permission to leave the Ursuline convent; +and her brother-in-law, Cardinal York, offered her hospitality in his +magnificent palace of the Cancelleria. Alfieri was at Naples when he +received this news, riding gloomily along the sea-shore, weeping +profusely (for we must remember that to an Italian, especially of the +eighteenth century, there is no incongruity in a would-be ancient Roman +shedding love-sick tears), unable to give his attention to work, living, +as he expresses it, on the coming in and going out of the post. "I +wished to return to Rome," he writes, "and at the same time I felt very +keenly that I ought not to do it yet. The struggles between love and +duty which take place in an honourable and tender heart, are the most +terrible and mortal pain that a man can suffer. I delayed throughout +April, and I determined to drag on through May; but on the 12th May I +found myself, I scarcely know how, back in Rome." + +Alfieri found the Countess of Albany established in the palace of the +Cancelleria, the mistress of the establishment, for her brother-in-law +was living in his episcopal town of Frascati. 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 circles seem to have gone completely +to sleep in the presence of this critical situation; and the habits of +Roman society, which were even a shade worse than those of Florence, +were not such as to give umbrage to the lovers. But those years during +which they had loved under the vigilant jealousy of Charles Edward, had +apparently fostered a love which was accustomed and satisfied with being +only a more passionate kind of friendship; the indomitable power of +resistance to himself, the passion for realising in himself some heroic +attitude which he admired, and the almost furious desire to reverse +completely his former habits of life, kept Alfieri up to the point of a +platonic connexion; and the Countess of Albany, intellectual, cold, +passive, easily moulded by a more vehement nature, loved Alfieri much +more with the head than with the heart, and loved in him just that which +made him prefer that they should meet and love as austerely as Petrarch +and Laura. The fact was, I believe, that the Countess of Albany had much +more mind than personality, and that she was therefore mere wax in the +hands of a man who had become so exclusively and violently intellectual +as Alfieri: she had seen too much of the coarse realities of life, of +the brutal giving way to sensual impulse: the heroic, the ideal, nay the +deliberately made up, the artificial, had a charm for her. Be this +as it may, the Countess and Alfieri continued, in the opinion of all +contemporaries, and according to the assurance of Alfieri himself, whose +cynicism and truthfulness are equal, on the same footing as in +Florence. + +And these months in Rome seem to have been the happiest months of +Alfieri's life, the happiest, probably, of the life of the Countess +of Albany. Alfieri hired the villa Strozzi, on the Esquiline, a small +palace built by one of Michel Angelo's pupils, and for which, including +the use of furniture, stables, and garden, he paid the now incredibly +small sum of ten scudi a month, about two pounds of our money. Permitting +himself only two coats, the black one for the evening, and the famous +blue one for ordinary occasions, and limiting his dinner to one dish of +meat and vegetables, without wine or coffee, Alfieri contrived to make +the comparatively small pension paid to him by his sister, go almost +as far as had the fine fortune of which he had despoiled himself. He +spent lavishly on books, and more lavishly on horses, on horses which, +according to his own account, were his third passion, coming only after +his love for Mme. d'Albany, and sometimes usurping the place of his love +of literary glory. + +The mania for systematic division of his time, the invincible tendency +to routine, which follows in most Italians after the disorder and +wastefulness of youth, had already got the better of Alfieri. He had, +almost at the moment when the passion for literature first disclosed +itself, made up his mind to write a definite number of tragedies, first +twelve, then fourteen, and no more; and to devote a certain number of +years to the elaborate process of first constructing them mentally, then +of writing them full length in prose, and finally of turning this prose +into verse; and he was later to devise a corresponding plan of writing +an equally fixed number of comedies and satires in an equally fixed +number of years, after which, as we have seen, he was to give up his +thoughts, having attained the age of forty-five, to preparing for death. + +This routine is a national characteristic, and absorbs many an Italian, +turning all the poetry of his nature to prose, with a kind of dreadful +inevitableness; but Alfieri did not merely submit to routine, he enjoyed +it, he devised and carried it out with all the ferocity of his nature. +To this man, who cared so much for the figure he cut, and so little for +all the things which surrounded him, a life reduced to absolute monotony +of grinding work was almost an object of aesthetic pleasure, almost +an object of sensual delight: he enjoyed a dead level, an endless +white-washed wall, as much as other men, and especially other poets, +enjoy the ups and downs, the irregularities and mottled colours of +existence. So Alfieri arranged for himself, in his house near Santa +Maria Maggiore, what to him was a life of exquisite delightfulness. + +He spent the whole early morning reading the Latin and Italian classics, +and grinding away at his tragedies, which, after repeated sketching out, +repeated writing out in prose, were now going through the most elaborate +process of writing, re-writing, revising, and re-revising in verse. +Then, before resuming his solitary studies in the afternoon, he would +have one of his many horses saddled, and ride about in the desolate +tracts of the town, which in papal times extended from Santa Maria +Maggiore to the Porta Pia, the Porta San Lorenzo, and St. John Lateran: +miles of former villa gardens, with quincunxes and flower-beds, cut up +for cabbage-growing, wide open spaces where the wall of a temple, the +arch of an aqueduct, rose crowned with wall-flower and weeds out of the +rank grass, the briars and nettles, the heaps of broken masonry and +plaster, among which shone beneath the darting lizards, scraps of +vermilion wall-fresco, the chips of purple porphyry or dark-green +serpentine; long avenues of trees early sere, closed in by arum-fringed +walls, or by ditches where the withered reeds creaked beneath the +festoons of clematis and wild vine; solemn and solitary wildernesses +within the city walls, where the silence was broken only by the lowing +of the herds driven along by the shaggy herdsman on his shaggy horse, by +the long-drawn, guttural chant of the carter stretched on the top of his +cart, and the jingle of his horse's bells; places inaccessible to the +present, a border-land of the past, and which, as Alfieri says, thinking +of those many times when he must have reined in his horse, and vaguely +and wistfully looked out on to the green desolation islanded with ruins +and traversed by the vast procession of the aqueducts, invited one to +meditate, and cry, and be a poet. And sometimes--we know it from the +sonnets to his horse Fido, who had, Alfieri tells us, carried the +beloved burden of his lady--Alfieri did not ride out alone. One of the +horses of the villa Strozzi was saddled for the Countess of Albany; and +this strange pair of platonic lovers rode forth together among the +ruins, the wife of Charles Edward listening, with something more than +mere abstract interest, to Alfieri's fiercest contemptuous tirades +against the tyranny of soldiers and priests, the tyranny of sloth and +lust which had turned these spots into a wilderness, and which had left +the world, as Alfieri always felt, and a man not unlike Alfieri in +savage and destructive austerity, St. Just, was later to say, empty +since the days of the Romans. + +Towards dusk Alfieri put by his books, and descended through the twilit +streets of the upper city--where the troops of red and yellow and blue +seminarists, and black and brown monks, passed by like ants, homeward +bound after their evening walk--into the busier parts of Rome, and +crossing the Corso filled with painted and gilded coaches, and making +his way through the many squares where the people gathered round the +lemonade-booth near the fountain or the obelisk, through the tortuous +black streets filled with the noise of the anvils and hammers of +the locksmiths and nailors behind the Pantheon, made his way towards +the palace, grand and prim in its architecture of Bramants, of the +Cancelleria, perhaps not without thinking that in the big square before +its windows, where the vegetable carts were unloaded every morning, and +the quacks and dentists and pedlars bawled all day, a man as strange, as +wayward and impatient of tyranny as himself, Giordano Bruno, had been +burned two centuries before by Cardinal York's predecessor in that big +palace of the Cancelleria. Fortunately there was no Cardinal York in the +Cancelleria, or at least only rarely; but instead only the beautiful +blonde woman with the dark hazel eyes, whom Alfieri spoke of as his +"lady," and, somewhat later, "as the sweet half of himself," and in +whose speech Alfieri was never Alfieri, or Vittorio, or the Count, but +merely "the poet," so completely had these strange, self-modelling, +unconsciously-attitudinising lovers, arrayed themselves and their love +according to the pattern of Dante and Petrarch. + +To the Countess, we may be sure, Alfieri never failed to give a most +elaborate account of his day's work, nor to read to her whatever scenes +of his plays he had blocked out, in prose, or worked up in verse. By 11 +o'clock, he tells us, he was always back in his solitary little villa on +the Esquiline. + +But this, although it is probably correct with regard to his visits to +Mme. d'Albany, with whom consideration for gossip prevented his staying +much after ten at night, must not be taken as the invariable rule; for +Alfieri, devoted as he was to his lady, by no means neglected other +society. He was finishing his allotted number of tragedies, and, as the +solemn moment of publication approached, he began to be tormented with +that same desire to display his work to others, to hear their praises +even if false, to understand their opinion even if unfavourable, which +came, by gusts, as one of the passions of his life. Rome was at that +time, like every Italian town, full of literary academies, conventicles +of very small intellectual fry meeting in private drawing-rooms or at +coffee-houses, and swayed by the overlordship of the famous Arcadia, +which had now sunk into being a huge club to which every creature who +scribbled, or daubed, or strummed, or had a coach-and-pair, or a bad +tongue, or a pretty face, or a title, belonged without further claims. +There were also several houses of women who affected intelligence or +culture, having no claims to beauty or fashion; and foremost among these, +but differing from them by the real originality and culture of the lady +of the house, the charm of her young daughter, and the superior quality +of the conversation and music to be enjoyed there, was the house of a +Signora Maria Pizzelli, of all women in Rome the one to whom, after the +Countess of Albany, Alfieri showed himself most assiduous. In her house +and in many others Alfieri began to give almost public readings of his +plays; trying to persuade himself that his object in so doing was to +judge, from the expression of face and even more from the restlessness +or quiescence of his listeners on their chairs, how his work might +affect the mixed audience of a theatre; but admitting in his heart of +hearts that the old desire to be remarked had as much to do with these +exhibitions as with the six-horse gallops which used to astonish the +people of Turin and Florence. + +But something better soon offered itself. The Duke Grimaldi had had a +small theatre constructed in the Spanish palace, his residence as +Ambassador from the Catholic King, and a small company of high-born +amateurs had been playing in it translations of French comedies and +tragedies. To these ladies and gentlemen Alfieri offered his _Antigone_, +which was accepted with fervour. The beautiful and majestic Duchess +of Zagarolo was to act the part of the heroine; her brother and +sister-in-law, the Duke and Duchess of Ceri, respectively the parts of +Haemon and of Argia, while the character of Creon, the villain of the +piece, was reserved for Alfieri himself. The performance of _Antigone_ +was a great solemnity. The magnificent rooms of the Spanish Embassy were +crowded with the fashionable world of Rome, which, in the year 1782, +included priests and princes of the Church quite as much as painted +ladies and powdered cavaliers. A contemporary diary, kept by the page of +the Princess Colonna, a certain Abate Benedetti, enables us to form some +notion of the assembly. Foremost among the ladies were the two rival +beauties, equally famous for their conquests in the ecclesiastical as +well as the secular nobility, the Princess Santacroce and the Princess +Altieri, vying with each other in the magnificence of their diamonds and +of their lace, and each upon the arm of a prince of the Church who had +the honour of being her orthodox _cavaliere servente_; the Princess +Altieri led in by Cardinal Giovan Francesco Albani, the very gallant and +art-loving nephew of Winckelmann's Cardinal Alessandro; the Princess +Santacroce escorted by the French Ambassador Cardinal de Bernis, the +amiable society rhymester of Mme. de Pompadour, whom Frederick the Great +had surnamed _Babet la bouquetiere_. In the front row sat the wife of +the Senator Rezzonico, who, in virtue of being the niece of the late +Pope Clement XIII., affected an almost royal pomp, and by her side sat +the wittiest and most literary of the Sacred College, the still very +flirtatious old Cardinal Gerdil. The hall was nearly full when the stir +in the crowd, and the general looking in one direction, announced the +arrival of a guest who excited unwonted attention. A young woman, who +scarcely looked her full age of thirty, small, slender, very simply and +elegantly dressed, with something still girlish in her small irregular +features and complexion of northern brilliancy, was conducted along the +gangway between the rows of chairs, and, as if she were the queen of the +entertainment, solemnly installed by the side of the Princess Rezzonico +in the first row. Was it because her husband had called himself King of +England, or because her lover was the author of the play about to be +performed? Be it as it may, the Countess of Albany was the object of +universal curiosity, and the emotion which she displayed during the play +was a second and perhaps more interesting performance for the +scandal-loving Romans. + + +While the ghosts of these long dead men and women, ladies in voluminous +brocaded skirts and diamond-covered bosoms, bursting out of the lace +and jewels of their stiff bodices, cardinals in trailing scarlet robes +and bishops with well-powdered hair contrasting curiously with their +Dominican or Franciscan dress, Roman nobles all in the strange old-world +costumes, with ruffs and trunk hose and emblazoned mantles, of the +Pope's household and of the military orders of Malta and Calatrava, +secular dandies in elaborately-embroidered silk coats and waistcoats, +ecclesiastical dandies to the full as dapper with their heavy lace, +and abundant fob jewels and inevitable two watches on the sober black +of their clothes;--while these ghosts whom we have evoked in all +their finery (long since gone to the _bric-a-brac_ shops) to fill the +theatre-hall of the Spanish palace, sit and listen to the symphony +which Cimarosa himself has written for _Antigone_, sit and watch the +magnificent Duchess of Zagarolo, dressed as Antigone in hoop and +stomacher and piled-up feathered hair, and the red-haired eccentric +Piedmontese Count, the d'Albany's lover, bellowing the anger of Creon; +let us try and sum up what the tragedies of Alfieri are for us people of +to-day, and what they must have been for those people of a hundred years +ago. + +While scribbling for mere pastime at his earliest play, Alfieri had felt +his mind illumined by a sort of double revelation: he would make his +name immortal, and he would create a new kind of tragedy. These two +halves of a proposition, of which he appears never to have entertained a +single moment's doubt, had originated at the same time and developed in +close connection: that he could be otherwise than an innovator was as +inconceivable to Alfieri as that he could be otherwise than a genius, +although, in reality, he was as far from being the one as from being +the other. The fact was that Alfieri felt in himself the power of +inventing a style and of producing works which should answer to the +requirements of his own nature: considering himself as the sole audience, +he considered himself as the unique playwright. Excessively limited in +his mental vision, and excessively strong in his mental muscle, it was +with his works as with his life: the ideal was so comparatively within +reach, and the will was so powerful, that one feels certain that he +nearly always succeeded in behaving in the way of which he approved, and +in writing in the style which he admired. And the most extraordinary +part of the coincidence was, that as he happened to live in a time and +country which had entirely neglected the tragic stage, and consequently +had no habits or aspirations connected with it, his own desires with +reference to Italian tragedy preceded those of his fellow-countrymen, +his own ideal was thrust upon them before they well knew where they +were; and his own nature and likings became the sole standard by which +he measured his works, his own satisfaction the only criterion by which +they could be judged. In order, therefore, to understand the nature of +Alfieri's plays, it is necessary, first of all, to understand what were +Alfieri's innate likings and dislikings in the domain of the drama. +Before all other things, Alfieri was not a poet: he lacked all, or very +nearly all, the faculties which are really poetical. To begin with the +more gross and external ones, he had no instinct for, no pleasure in, +metrical arrangements for their own sake; he did not think nor invent in +verse, ideas did not come to him on the wave of metre; he thought out, +he elaborately finished, every sentence in prose, and then translated +that prose into verse, as he might have translated (and in some +instances actually did translate) from a French version into an Italian +one. Moreover he was, to a degree which would have been surprising even +in a prose writer, deficient in that which constitutes the intellectual +essence of poetry as metre constitutes its material externality; in +that tendency to see things surrounded by, disguised in, a swarm, a +masquerade, of associated ideas; deficient in the power of suggesting +images, of conceiving figures of speech; in fancy, imagination, in the +metaphorical faculty, or whatever else we may choose to call it. Nor did +he perceive or describe visible things, visible effects, in their own +unmetaphorical shapes and colours: not a line of description, not an +adjective can be found in his works except such as may be absolutely +indispensable for topographical or similar intelligibility; Alfieri +obviously cared as little for beautiful sights as for beautiful sound. +This being the case, everything that we might call distinctly poetical, +all those things which are precious to us in Shakespeare, or Marlowe, +or Webster, in Goethe or Schiller, nay, even, occurring at intervals, +in Racine himself, at least as much as mere psychology or oratory or +pathos, appeared to Alfieri in the light of mere meretricious gewgaws, +which took away from the interest of dramatic action without affording +him any satisfaction in return. As it was with metre and metaphor and +description, so it was also with the indefinable something which we call +lyric quality: the something which sings to our soul, and which sends a +thrill of delight through our nerves or a gust of emotion across our +nature in the same direct way as do the notes of certain voices, the +phrases of certain pieces of music: instantaneously, unreasoningly and +unerringly. Of this Alfieri had little, so little that we may also say +that he had nothing; the presence of this quality being evidently +unnoticed by him and unappreciated. So much for the absolutely poetical +qualities. Of what I may call the prose qualities of a playwright, only +a certain number appealed to Alfieri, and only a certain number were +possessed by him. In a time when the novel was beginning to become a +psychological study more minute than any stage play could ever be, +Alfieri was only very moderately interested in the subtle analysis or +representation of character and state of mind; the fine touches which +bring home a person or a situation did not attract his attention; nor +was he troubled by considerations concerning the probability of a +given word or words being spoken at a particular moment and by a +particular man or woman: realism had no meaning for him. As it was +with intellectual conception, so was it also with instructive sympathy: +Alfieri never subtly analysed the anatomy of individual nature, nor +did he unconsciously mimic its action and tones; what most of us mean +by pathos did not appeal to him. Neither metrical nor imaginative +pleasurableness, nor descriptive charm, nor lyric poignancy, nor +psychological analysis or intention entered, therefore, into Alfieri's +conception of a desirable tragedy, any more than any of these things +fell within the range of his special talents; for, we must always bear +in mind that with this man, whose feelings and desires were in such +constant action and reaction, with this man whose will imposed his +intellectual notions on his feelings, and his emotional tendencies on +his thoughts, the thing which he enjoys is always as the concave to the +convex of the thing which he produces. But although Alfieri was not a +poet, and was not even a potential novel writer, he was, in a sense, +essentially a dramatist; though even here we must distinguish and +diminish. Alfieri was not a man who cared for rapid action or for +intricate plot: he never felt the smallest inclination to violate the +old traditions of the pseudo-classic stage by those thrilling scenes +or sights which had to be described and not shown, nor by those +complications of interest which require years for an action instead of +the orthodox twenty-four hours. + +He was perfectly satisfied with the no-place, no-where--with the vague +temple, or palace hall, or public square where, as in the country of the +abstract, the action of pseudo-classic tragedy always takes place, or, +more properly speaking, the talking of pseudo-classic tragedy always +goes on; he was perfectly satisfied with sending in a servant or a +messenger to inform the public of a murder or suicide committed behind +the scenes; he was perfectly satisfied with taking up a story, so to +speak, at the eleventh hour, without tracing it to its original causes +or developing it through its various phases. In such matters Alfieri was +as undramatic as Corneille or Racine. Nevertheless Alfieri had a +distinct dramatic sense: an intense _poseur_ himself, enjoying nothing +so much as working himself up to produce a given effect upon his own +mind or upon others, he had an extraordinary instinct for the theatrical, +for the moral attitude which may be struck so as to be effective, and +for the arrangement of subordinate parts so that this attitude surprise +and move the audience. The moral attitude, the psychological gesture, +which thus became the main interest of Alfieri's plays, was, as might be +expected from such a man, nearly always his own moral attitude, his own +psychological gesture; he himself, his uncompromising, unhesitating, +unflinching, curt and emphatic nature, is always the hero or heroine +of the play, however much the situation, the incidents, the other +characteristics may vary. Antigone is generous and tender, Creon is +inhuman in all save paternal feeling, Saul is a suspicious madman, +Agamemnon a just and confiding hero, Clytaemnestra is sinful and +self-sophisticating, Virginia pure and open-minded; yet all these +different people, despite all their differences, speak and act as +Alfieri would speak and act, could he, without losing his peculiar +characteristics, adopt for the moment vices or virtues which would +become quite secondary matters by the side of his essential qualities of +pride, narrowness, decision, violence, and self-importance. Whether he +paint his face into a smile or a scowl, whether he put on the blond wig +of innocence, or the black wig of villainy, the man's movement and +gesture, the tone of his voice, the accent of his words, the length of +his sentences, are always the same: so much so that in one play there +may be two or three Alfieris, good and bad, Alfieris turned perfectly +virtuous or perfectly vicious; but anything that is not an Alfieri in +some tolerably transparent disguise, is sure to be a puppet, a lay +figure with as few joints as possible, just able to stretch out its arms +and clap them to its sides, but dangling suspended between heaven and +earth. + +The attitude and the gesture, which are the things for whose sake the +play exists, are, as I have said, the attitude and gesture of Alfieri. +But the moral attitude and gesture of Alfieri happened to be just those +which were rarest in the eighteenth century in all countries, and more +especially rare in Italy; and they were the moral attitude and gesture +which the eighteenth century absolutely required to become the nineteenth, +and which the Italy of Peter Leopold and Pius VI. and Metastasio +and Goldoni absolutely required to become the Italy of Mazzini and +Garibaldi, the Italy of Foscolo and Leopardi: they were the attitude and +the gesture of single-mindedness, haughtiness, indifference to one's +own comfort and one's neighbours' opinion, the attitude and gesture +of manliness, of strength, if you will, of heroism. To have written +tragedies whose whole value depended upon the striking exhibition of +these qualities; and to have made this exhibition interesting, nay, +fascinating to the very people, to the amiable, humane, indifferent, +lying, feeble-spirited Italians of the latter eighteenth century, till +these very men were ashamed of what they had hitherto been; to stamp the +new generation with the clear-cut die of his own strong character; this +was the reality of the mission which Alfieri had felt within himself: a +reality which will be remembered when his plays shall have long ceased +to be acted, and shall long have ceased to be read. Alfieri imagined +himself to be a great poetic genius, and a great dramatic innovator: +he scorned with loathing the works of Corneille, of Racine, and of +Voltaire, all immeasurably more valuable as poetry and drama than his +own; he hated the works of Metastasio, a poet and a playwright by the +divine right of genius; he refused to read Shakespeare, lest Shakespeare +should spoil the perfection of his own conceptions. He slaved for months +and years perfecting each of his plays, recasting the action and +curtailing the dialogue and polishing the verse; yet the action was +always heavy, the dialogue unnatural to the last degree, the verse +unpoetical. But all this extraordinary self-sufficiency was not a +delusion, all this extraordinary labour was not a waste: Alfieri, who +never had a single poetical thought, nor a single art-revolutionising +notion, was yet a great genius and a great innovator, inasmuch as he +first moulded in his own image the Italian patriot of the nineteenth +century. His use consisted in his mere existence among men so different +from himself; and his dramas, his elaborately constructed and curtailed +and corrected dramas, were, so to speak, a system of mirrors by which +the image of this strange new-fangled personality might be flashed +everywhere into the souls of his contemporaries. To perceive the +moral attitude and gesture specially characteristic of himself, to +artificially correct and improve and isolate them in his own reality, +and then to multiply their likeness for all the world; to know himself +to be Alfieri, to make himself up as Alfieri, and to write plays whereof +the heroes and heroines were mere repetitions of Alfieri; such was the +mission of this powerful and spontaneous nature, of this self-conscious +and self-manipulating _poseur_. + +The success of that performance of _Antigone_ on the amateur stage +in the Spanish palace was very great. A young man, half lay, half +ecclesiastic, a dubious sort of poet, secretary, factotum, accustomed to +write not the most sincere poetry, and to execute, perhaps, not the most +creditable errands, of the Pope's dubious nephew, Duke Braschi--a young +man named Vincenzo Monti, was present at this performance, or one +of the succeeding ones; and from that moment became the author of the +revolutionary tragedy of _Aristodemo_, the potential author of that +famous ode on the battle of Marengo, one of the forerunners of new +Italy. Nay, even when, some few months later, there died at Vienna the +old Abate Metastasio, and his death brought home to a rather forgetful +world what a poet and what a dramatist that old Metastasio had been; +even then, an intimate friend of the dead man, a worldly priest, a quasi +prelate, the Abate Taruffi, could find no better winding up for the +funeral oration, delivered before all the pedants and prigs and fops and +spies of pontifical Rome assembled in the rooms of the Arcadian academy, +than to point to Count Vittorio Alfieri, and prophesy that Metastasio +had found a successor greater than himself. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +SEPARATION. + + +Alfieri and the Countess were happy, happier, perhaps, than at any +other time of their lives; but this happiness had to be paid for. The +false position in which, however faultlessly, they were placed; the +illegitimate affection in which, however blamelessly, they were +indulging; these things, offensive to social institutions, although in +no manner wrong in themselves, had produced their fruit of humiliation, +nay, of degradation. Fate is more of a Conservative than we are apt to +think; it resents the efforts of any individual, be he as blameless +as possible, to resist for his own comfort and satisfaction the +uncomfortable and unsatisfactory arrangements of the world; it punishes +the man who seeks to elude an unjust law by condemning him to the same +moral police depot, to the same moral prison-food, as the villain who +has eluded the holiest law that was ever framed; and Fate, therefore, +soiled the poetic passion of Alfieri and his lady by forcing it to the +base practices of any illicit love. The manner in which Fate executes +these summary lynchings of people's honour could not usually be more +ingenious; there seems to be a special arrangement by which offenders +are punished in their most sensitive part. The punishment of Alfieri +and of Mme. d'Albany for refusing to sacrifice their happiness to the +proprieties of a society which married girls of nineteen to drunkards +whom they had never seen, but which would not hear of divorce; this +punishment, falling directly only upon the man, but probably just as +heavy upon the woman who witnessed the humiliation of the person whom +she most loved and respected, consisted in turning Alfieri, the man who +was training Italy to be self-respecting, truthful, unflinching, into a +toady, a liar, and an intriguer. + +The Countess of Albany, living in the palace of her brother-in-law, +Cardinal York, and under the special protection of the Pope, was +entirely dependent on the good pleasure of the priestly bureaucracy of +the Rome of Pius VI., that is to say, of about the most contemptible +and vilest set of fools and hypocrites and sinners that can well be +conceived; the Papacy, just before the Revolution, had become one of the +most corrupt of the many corrupt Governments of the day. Cardinal York +himself was a weak and silly, but honest and kind-hearted man; but +Cardinal York was entirely swayed by the prelates and priests and +priestlets and semi-priestly semi-lay nondescripts among whom he lived. +He was responsible for the honour of the Countess of Albany, that is to +say, of her husband and his brother; and the honour of the Countess of +Albany depended exactly upon the remarks which the most depraved and +hypocritical clergy in Europe, the people who did or abetted all the +dirty work of Pius VI. and his Sacred College, chose to make or not to +make about her conduct. + +Such were the persons upon whom depended the liberty and happiness of +Alfieri's lady, the possibility of that high-flown Platonic intercourse +which constituted Louis d'Albany's whole happiness, and Alfieri's +strongest incentive to glory; a word from them could exile Alfieri and +lock the Countess up in a convent. The consequence of this state of +things is humiliating to relate, since it shows to what baseness the +most high-minded among us may be forced to degrade themselves. Already, +during those few days' sojourn in Rome, before his stay in Naples and +Mme. d'Albany's release from the Ursuline convent, Alfieri had spent his +time running about flattering and wheedling the powers in command (that +is to say, the corrupt ministers of the Papacy and their retinue of +minions and spies), in order to obtain leave to inhabit the same city as +his beloved and to see her from time to time; doing everything, and +stooping to everything, he tells us, in order to be tolerated by those +priests and priestlets whom he abhorred and despised from the bottom +of his heart. "After so many frenzies, and efforts to make myself a +free man," he writes, in his autobiography, "I found myself suddenly +transformed into a man paying calls, and making bows and fine speeches +in Rome, exactly like a candidate on promotion in prelatedom." At this +price of bitter humiliation, nay, of something more real than mere +humiliation, Alfieri bought the privilege of frequenting the palace of +Cardinal York. But it was a privilege for which you could not pay once +and for all; its price was a black-mail of humbugging, and wheedling, +and dirt-eating. + +Alfieri hated and despised all sovereigns and all priests; and if +there were a sovereign and a priest whom he despised and hated more +than the rest, it was the then reigning Pius VI., a vain, avaricious, +weak-minded man, stickling not in the least at humiliating Catholicism +before anyone who asked him to do it, by no means clean-handed in his +efforts to enrich his family, without courage, or fidelity to his +promise; a man whose miserable end as the brutally-treated captive of +the French Republic has not been sufficient to raise to the dignity of a +martyr. Of this Pope Pius VI. did Alfieri crave an audience, and to him +did he offer the dedication of one of his plays; nay, the man who had +sacrificed his fortune in order to free himself from the comparatively +clean-handed despotism of Sardinia, who had stubbornly refused to be +presented to Frederick the Great and Catherine II., who had declined +making Metastasio's acquaintance on account of a too deferential bow +which he had seen the old poet make to Maria Theresa; the man who had in +his portfolios plays and sonnets and essays intended to teach the world +contempt for kings and priests, this man, this Alfieri, submitted to +having his cheek patted by Pope Braschi. This stain of baseness and +hypocrisy with which, as he says, he contaminated himself, ate like a +hidden and shameful sore into Alfieri's soul; yet, until the moment of +writing his autobiography, he had not the courage to display this +galling thing of the past even to his most intimate friends. To Louise +d'Albany, to the woman between whom and himself he boasted that there +was never the slightest reticence or deceit, he screwed up the force to +tell the tale of that interview only some time later. Alfieri, honest +enough to lay bare his own self-degradation, was not generous enough to +hide the fact that this self-degradation was incurred out of love for +her. That her hero should have stooped so low, so low that he scarcely +dared to tell even her, surely this must have been as galling to the +Countess of Albany as was the caress of Pius VI. to Alfieri himself; +this high poetic love of theirs, this exotic Dantesque passion, had been +dragged down, by the impartial legality of fate, to the humiliating +punishment which awaited all the basest love intrigues in this base Rome +of the base eighteenth century. + +And, after some time, the stock of toleration bought at the price of +this baseness was exhausted. The clerical friends and advisers of +Cardinal York, who had hitherto assured the foolish prince of the Church +that he was acting for the honour of his brother and his brother's wife +in leaving a young woman of thirty-one to the sole care of a young poet +of thirty-four, each being well known to be over head and ears in love +with the other; these prudent ecclesiastics, little by little, began to +change their minds, and the success of Alfieri's plays, the general +interest in him and his lady which that success produced, suggested to +them that there really might be some impropriety in the familiarity +between the wife of Charles Edward and the author of _Antigone_. The +train was laid, and the match was soon applied. In April 1783 the +Pretender fell ill in Florence, so ill that his brother was summoned at +once to what seemed his death-bed. Charles Edward recovered. But during +that illness the offended husband, who, we must remember, had offered a +reward for Alfieri's murder, poured out to his brother, moved and +reconciled to him by the recent fear of his death, all his grievances +against the Tuscan Court, against his wife, and against her lover. A +letter of Sir Horace Mann makes it clear that Charles Edward persuaded +his brother that his ill-usage of his wife (which, however, Mann, with +his spies everywhere, had vouched for at the time) was a mere invention, +and part of an odious plot by which Alfieri had imposed upon the Grand +Duke, the Pope, the society of Florence and Rome, nay, upon Cardinal +York himself, in order to obtain their connivance in a shameful intrigue +development. The Cardinal returned to Rome in a state of indignation +proportionate to his previous saintly indifference to the doings of +Alfieri and Mme. d'Albany; he discovered that he had been shutting his +eyes to what all the world (by Alfieri's own confession) saw as a very +hazardous state of things; and, with the tendency to run into extremes +of a foolish and weak-minded creature, he immediately published from all +the housetops the dishonour whose existence had never occurred to him +before. To the Countess of Albany he intimated that he would not permit +her to receive Alfieri under his roof; and of the Pope (the Pope who had +so recently patted Alfieri's cheek) he immediately implored an order +that Alfieri should quit the Papal States within a fortnight. The order +was given; but Alfieri, in whose truthfulness I have complete faith, +says that, knowing that the order had been asked for, he forestalled the +ignominy of being banished by spontaneously bidding farewell to the +Countess of Albany and to Rome. + +"This event," says Alfieri, "upset my brains for nearly two years; and +upset and retarded also my work in every way." In speaking of Alfieri's +youth I have already had occasion to remark that there was in this man's +character something abnormal; he was, as I have said, a moral invalid +from birth; his very energy and resolution had somewhat of the frenzy +and rigidity of a nervous disease, and though he would seem morally +stronger than other men when strictly following his self-prescribed +rule of excessive intellectual exercise, and when surrounded by a +soothing atmosphere of affection and encouragement, his old malady of +melancholy and rage (melancholy and rage whom he represents in one of his +sonnets as two horrible-faced women seated on either side of him), his +old incapacity for work, for interest in anything, his old feverish +restlessness of place, returned, as a fever returns with its heat and +cold and impotence and delirium, whenever he was shut out of this +atmosphere of happiness, whenever he was exposed to any sort of moral +hardship. On leaving Rome Alfieri went to Siena, where, years before, +when he had come light-hearted and bent only upon literary fame, to +learn Tuscan, he had been introduced into a little circle of men and +women whom he faithfully loved, and to that Francesco Gori who shared +with Tommaso di Caluso the rather trying honour of being his bosom +friend. This Gori, "an incomparable man," writes Alfieri, "good, +compassionate, and with all his austerity and ruggedness of virtue (_con +tanta altezza e ferocia di sensi_) most gentle," appears literally to +have nursed Alfieri in this period of moral sickness as one might nurse +a sick or badly-bruised child. "Without him," writes Alfieri, "I think +I should most likely have gone mad. But he, although he saw in me a +would-be hero so disgracefully broken in spirit and inferior to himself" +(this passage is characteristic, as showing that Alfieri considered +himself, when in a normal condition, far superior to his much-praised +Gori), "although he knew better than any the meaning of courage and +endurance, did not, therefore, cruelly and inopportunely, oppose +his severe and frozen reason to my frenzies, but, on the contrary, +diminished my pain by dividing it with me. O rare, O truly heavenly +gift, this of being able both to reason and to feel." + +Weeping and raving, Alfieri was living once more upon letters received +and sent as during his previous separation from Mme. d'Albany; and of +all these love-letters, none appear to have come down to us. Carefully +preserved by Mme. d'Albany and by her heir Fabre, they fell into the +hands of a Mr. Gache of Montpellier, who assumed the grave responsibility +of destroying them and of thus suppressing for ever the most important +evidence in the law-suit which posterity will for ever be bringing +against Alfieri and Mme. d'Albany in favour of Charles Edward, or +against Charles Edward in favour of Alfieri and Mme. d'Albany. But some +weeks ago, among the pile of the Countess's letters to Sienese friends +preserved by Cavaliere Guiseppe Porri at Siena, I had the good fortune +to discover what are virtually five love-letters of hers, obviously +intended for Alfieri although addressed to his friend Francesco Gori. +I confess that an eerie feeling came over me as I unfolded these five +closely-written, unsigned and undated little squares of yellow paper, +things intended so exclusively for the mere moment of writing and +reading, all that long-dead momentary passion of a long-dead man and +woman quivering back into reality, filling, as an assembly of ghosts +might fill a house, and drive out its living occupants, this present +hour which so soon will itself have become, with all its passions and +worries, a part of the past, of the indifferent, the passionless. One is +frightened on suddenly being admitted to witness, unperceived, as by +the opening of a long-locked door, or by some spell said over a crystal +globe or a beryl-stone, such passion as this; one feels as if one would +almost rather not. These five letters, as I have said, are addressed to +a "Dear Signor Francesco, friend of my friend," and who, of course, +is Francesco Gori; and are written, which no other letters of Mme. +d'Albany's are, not in French, but in tolerably idiomatic though far +from correct Italian. Only one of them has any indication of place or +date, "Genzano, Mardi"; but this, and the references to Alfieri's +approaching journey northward and to Gori's intention of escorting him +as far as Genoa, is sufficient to show that they must have been written +in the summer of 1783, when Cardinal York, terrified at the liberty +which he had allowed to his sister-in-law, had conveyed her safely to +some villa in the Alban Hills. The woman who wrote these letters is a +strangely different being from the quiet jog-trot, rather cynically +philosophical Countess of Albany whom we know from all her other +innumerable manuscript letters, from the published answers of Sismondi, +of Foscolo and of Mme. de Souza to letters of hers which have disappeared. +The hysterical frenzy of Alfieri seems to have entered into this woman; +he has worked up this naturally placid but malleable soul, this woman in +bad health, deprived of all friends, jealously guarded by enemies, weak +and depressed, until she has become another himself, "weeping, raving," +like himself, but unable to relieve, perhaps to enjoy, all this frantic +grief by running about like the mad Orlando, or talking and weeping by +the hour to a compassionate Gori. + +"Dear Signor Francesco," she writes; "how grateful I am to you for your +compassion. You can't have a notion of our unhappiness. My misery is not +in the least less than that of our friend. There are moments when I +feel my heart torn to pieces thinking of all that he must suffer. I have +no consolation except your being with him, and that is something. Never +let him remain alone. He is worse, and I know that he greatly enjoys +your society, for you are the only person who does not bore him and whom +he always meets with pleasure. Oh! dear Signor Francesco, in what a sea +of miseries are we not! You also, because our miseries are certainly +also yours. I no longer live; and if it were not for my friend, for whom +I am keeping myself, I would not drag out this miserable life. What do I +do in this world? I am a useless creature in it; and why should I suffer +when it is of no use to anyone? But my friend--I cannot make up my mind +to leave him, and he must live for his own glory; and, as long as he +lives, even if I had to walk on my hands, I would suffer and live. Who +knows what will happen, it is so long since the man in Florence (Charles +Edward) is ill, and still he lives, and it seems to me that he is made +of iron in order that we may all die. You will say, in order to console +me, that he can't last; but I see things clearly. This illness has not +made him younger, but he may live another couple of years. He may at any +moment be suffocated by the humours which have risen to his chest. What +a cruel thing to expect one's happiness from the death of another! O +God! how it degrades one's soul! And yet I cannot refrain from wishing +it. What a thing, what a horrible thing is life; and for me it has been +a continual suffering, all except the two years that I spent with my +friend, and even then I lived in the midst of tears. And you also are +probably not happy; with a heart like yours it is not possible that +you should be. Whoever is born with any feeling can scarcely enjoy +happiness. I recommend our friend to your care, particularly his health. +Mine is not so bad; I take care of myself and stay much in bed to kill +the time and to rest my nerves, which are very weak. Good-bye, dear +Signor Francesco, preserve your friendship for me; I deserve it, since I +appreciate you." + +Later on she writes again:-- + +"Dear Signor Francesco, friend of ours. I do all I can to take courage. +I study as much as I can. Music alone distracts my thoughts, or rather +deadens them, and I play the harp many hours a day, and I do so also +because I know that my friend wishes me to get to play it well. I work +at it as hard as I can. I live only for him; without him life would be +odious to me, and I could not endure it. I do nothing in this world; I +am useless in it; and where is the use of suffering for nothing? But +there is my friend, and I must remain on this earth. I do not doubt of +him; I know how much he loves me. But in moments of suffering I have +fears lest he should find someone who would give him less pain than +myself, with whom he might live cheerful and happy. I ought to wish it, +but I have not got the strength to do so. But I believe so fully in him +that I am satisfied as soon as he tells me that such a thing cannot +happen. I love him more than myself; it is a union of feeling which +we only can understand. I find in him all that I can desire; he is +everything for me; and yet I must suffer separation from him. Certainly +if I could come to a violent decision I should be the happiest woman +in the world; I should never think of the past; I should live in him +and for him; for I care for nothing in this world. Comfort, luxury, +position, all is vanity for me; peace by his side would suffice for me. +And yet I am condemned to languish far from him. What a horrible life!" + +Again she writes to Gori:-- + +"Dear friend, I am so very, very grateful for the interest you take in +my unhappy situation, which is really terrible. Time serves only to +aggravate it, and certainly it will bring no alleviation to my misery +until I shall meet our friend. There is no peace, no tranquillity for +me. I would give whatever of life may remain to me in order to live for +one day with him, and I should be satisfied. My feelings for him are +unchangeable, and I am sure that his for me are the same. When shall I +see the end of my woes? Who knows whether I shall ever see it? That man +(Charles Edward) does not seem inclined to depart ... I suffer a little +from my nerves ... but those are the least of my sufferings. It is the +heart which suffers. I have moments of despair when I could throw myself +out of the window were it not for the thought that I must live for my +friend's sake; that my life is his. I feel a disgust for life which is +so reasoned out that I say to myself sometimes, 'Why do I live? What +good do I do?' and then I continue to suffer patiently, remembering +my friend. Forgive me for unbosoming myself with you, who alone can +understand me; you alone, except my friend, understand what I suffer. +Do you know, you ought to come and see me this winter, you would give +me such a pleasure. Good-bye, dear Signor Francesco; preserve your +friendship for me." + +Thus she runs on, repeating and re-repeating the same ideas, the same +words, her love for Alfieri, her desperate situation, her hatred of +life, her uselessness, her desire to play the harp well for Alfieri's +sake, her hopes that Charles Edward may die; disconnected phrases, run +into each other without so much as a comma or a full stop (since I +have had to punctuate my translation, at least partially, to make it +intelligible); the excited, unconsecutive, unceasing, discursive, +reiterating gabble of hysteria, eager, vague, impotent, thoughts +suddenly vanishing and as suddenly coming to a dead stop; everything +rattled off as if between two sobs or two convulsions. Did Alfieri enjoy +receiving letters such as these? Doubtless: they were echoes of his own +ravings; fuel for his own passion and vanity. It did not strike him, for +all the Greek and Roman heroes and heroines whom he had made to speak +with stoical, unflinching curtness, that there could be anything to move +shame, and compassion sickened by shame, in the fact that this should be +the expression of that high and pure love imitated from Dante and +Petrarch. What could he do? Give up Louise d'Albany, forget her; and bid +her, who lived only in him, whom a few years must free, forget him at +the price of breaking her heart? Certainly not. But he, the man, the man +free to move about, to work, with friends and occupations, should surely +have tried to teach resignation and patience to this poor lonely, sick, +hysterical woman, pointing out to her that if only they would wait, and +wait courageously, the moment of liberation and happiness must come. +Surely more difficult and humiliating for this lover to bear than the +sight of his lady degraded by the foul words and deeds of the drunken +Pretender, ought to have been the reading of such letters as these; the +sight of this once calm and dignified woman, of this Beatrice or Laura, +in her disconnected hysterical ravings. And for myself, the thought of +all that the Countess of Albany endured at the hands of Charles Edward +awakens less pity, though pity mixed with indignation at the fate which +humiliated her so deeply, and with shame for that deep humiliation, than +that sudden cry with which she stops in the midst of the light-headed +gabble about her miseries, and seems to start back ashamed as at the +sight of her passion and tear-defiled face in a mirror: "What a cruel +thing to expect one's happiness from the death of another! O God! how it +degrades one's soul!" + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +COLMAR. + + +"On the 17th August 1784, at eight in the morning, at the inn of the +_Two Keys_, Colmar, I met her, and remained speechless from excess of +joy." So runs an annotation of Alfieri on the margin of one of his +lyrics. + +The hour of liberty and happiness had come for Alfieri and Mme. +d'Albany; sooner by far than they expected, and sooner, we may think, +than they deserved. Liberty and happiness, however, not in the face +of the law. Charles Edward was still alive; but, pressed by King +Gustavus III. of Sweden, whom he contrived to wheedle out of some most +unnecessary money, he had consented to a legal separation from his +fugitive wife; as a result of which the Countess of Albany, renouncing +all money supplies from the Stuarts, and subsisting entirely upon a +share of the two pensions, French and Papal, granted to her husband, +was permitted to spend a portion of the year wheresoever she pleased, +provided she returned for awhile to show herself in the Papal States. +On hearing the unexpected news, Alfieri, who was crossing the Apennines +of Modena with fourteen horses that he had been to buy in England, was +seized with a violent temptation to send his caravan along the main +road, and gallop by cross-paths to meet the Countess, who was crossing +the Apennines of Bologna on her way from Rome to the baths of Baden in +Switzerland. The thought of her honour and safety restrained him, and he +pushed on moodily to Siena. But, as on a previous occasion, his stern +resolution not to seek his lady soon gave way; and two months later +followed that meeting at the _Two Keys_ at Colmar on the Rhine. + +For the first time in those seven long years of platonic passion, +Alfieri and Mme. d'Albany found themselves settled beneath the same +roof. To the mind of this Italian man, and this half-French, half-German +woman of the eighteenth century, for whom marriage was one of the +sacraments of a religion in which they wholly disbelieved, and one +of the institutions of a society which alleviated it with universal +adultery; to Alfieri and Mme. d'Albany the legal separation from Charles +Edward Stuart was equivalent to a divorce. The Pretender could no longer +prescribe any line of conduct to his wife; she was free to live where +and with whom she chose; and if she were not free to marry, the idea, +the wish for marriage, probably never crossed the brains of these two +platonic lovers of seven years' standing. Marriage was a social contract +between people who wished to obtain each other's money and titles and +lands--who wished to have heirs. Alfieri, who had made over all his +property to his sister, and the Countess, who lived on a pension, had no +money or titles or lands to throw together; and they certainly neither +of them, the man living entirely for his work, the woman living entirely +for the man, had the smallest desire to have children, heirs to nothing +at all. What injury could their living together now do to Charles Edward, +who had relinquished all his husband's rights? None, evidently. On the +other hand, what harm could their living together do to their own honour +or happiness, now that they had had seven years' experience that only +death could extinguish their affection? None, again evidently. And as to +harm to the institutions of society, what were those institutions, and +what was their value, that they should be respected? Such, could we +have questioned them, would have been the answers of Alfieri and the +Countess. That they were setting an example to others less pure in mind, +less exceptional in position; that they were making it more difficult +for marriage to be reorganised on a more rational plan, by showing men +and women a something that might do instead of rationally organised +marriage; that they were, in short, preventing the law from being +rectified, by taking the law into their own hands: such thoughts could +not enter into the mind of continentals of the eighteenth century, +people for whom the great Revolution, Romanticism, and the new views +of society which grew out of both, were still in the future. That a +punishment should await them, that as time went on and youthful passion +diminished, their lives should be barren and silent and cold for want of +all those things: children, legal bonds, social recognition, by which +their union should fall short of a real marriage; this they could never +anticipate. + +For the moment, united in the "excessively clean and comfortable" little +chateau, rented by Madame d'Albany at a short distance from Colmar; +riding and driving about in the lovely Rhine country; the Countess deep +in her reading again, Alfieri deep once more in his writings; together, +above all, after so many months of separation: they seemed perfectly +happy. So happy that it seemed as if a misfortune must come to restore +the natural balance of things; and the misfortune came, in the sudden +news of the death of poor Francesco Gori. A sense as of guiltiness at +having half forgotten that thoughtful and gentle friend in the first +flush of their happiness, seems to have come over them. + +"O God," wrote Alfieri to Gori's friend Bianchi at Siena, "I don't know +what I shall do. I always see him and speak to him, and every smallest +word and thought and gesture of his returns to my mind, and stabs my +heart. I do not feel very sorry for him: he cared little for life for +its own sake, and the life which he was forced to lead was too far below +his great soul, and the goodness and tenderness of his heart, and the +nobility of his noble scornfulness. The person dearest to me of any, +and immediately next to whom I loved Checco [Gori] most, knew and +appreciated him and is not to be consoled for such a loss. I told him +already last July, so many, many times, that he was not well, that he +was growing visibly thinner day by day. Oh! I ought never to have left +him in this state." + +A letter, this one on Gori's death, which may induce us to forgive the +letters of Alfieri of which we have seen a reflection in those of Mme. +d'Albany: the passionate grief for the lost friend making us feel that +there is something noble in the possibility of even the morbid grief at +the lost mistress. More touching still, bringing home what each of us, +alas! must have felt in those long, dull griefs for one who is not +our kith and kin, whom the thoughts of our nearest and dearest, of our +work, of all those things which the world recognises as ours in a sense +in which the poor beloved dead was not, does not permit us to mourn in +such a way as to satisfy our heart, and the longing for whom, half +suppressed, comes but the more pertinaciously to haunt us, to make the +present and future, all where he or she is not, a blank; more touching +than any letter in which Alfieri gives free vent to his grief for poor +Gori, is that note which he wrote upon the manuscript of his poem on +Duke Alexander's murder, after the annotation saying that this work was +resumed at Siena, the 17th July 1784--"O God! and the friend of my heart +was still living then"; the words which a man speaks, or writes only for +himself, feeling that no one, not those even who are the very flesh and +blood of his heart, can, since they are not himself, feel that terrible +pang at suddenly seeing the past so close within his reach, so +hopelessly beyond his grasp. + +The death of Gori seemed the only circumstance which diminished the +happiness of Alfieri and Mme. d'Albany; nay, it is not heartless, +surely, to say that, cruel as was that wound, there was doubtless a +quite special sad sweetness in each trying to heal it in the other, in +the redoubled love due to this fellow-feeling in affliction, the new +energy of affection which comes to the survivors whenever Death calls +out the warning, "Love each other while I still let you." But they had +still to pay, and pay in many instalments, the price of happiness +snatched before its legitimate time. + +Supposed to be living apart from Alfieri, the Countess could not, +therefore, take him back with her to Italy, where, according to the +stipulations of the act of separation, she was bound to spend the +greater part of every year. Hence the stay at Colmar in 1784, and those +in the succeeding years, were merely so many interludes of happiness in +the dreary life of separation; happiness which, as Alfieri says in one +of his sonnets, was constantly embittered by the thought that every day +and every hour was bringing them nearer to a cruel parting. The day +came: Alfieri had to take leave of Mme. d'Albany; and, as he expresses +it, had to return to much worse gloom than before, being separated from +his lady without having the consolation of seeing Gori once more. +Mechanically he returned to Siena, to Siena which it was impossible +to conceive without his friend Checco; but when he realised the empty +house, the empty town, he found the place he had so loved insupportable, +and went to spend his long solitary winter writing, reading, translating, +breaking in horses, leading a slave's life to pass the weary time, at +Pisa. In April 1785 Mme. d'Albany obtained permission to quit Bologna, +where she had spent the winter, and to go to her sisters in France. In +September she and her lover met once more in the beloved country-house +on the Rhine. But again, in December, came another separation; Mme. +d'Albany went to Paris, and Alfieri remained behind at Colmar. + +"Shall we then be again separated," he writes in a sonnet, "by cruel and +lying opinion, which blames us for errors which the whole world commits +every day? Unhappy that I am! The more I love thee with true and loyal +love, the more must I ever refuse myself that for which I am always +longing: thy sweet sight, beyond which I ask for nothing. But the vulgar +cannot understand this, and knows us but little, and does not see that +thy pure heart is the seat of virtue." + +Strange words, and which, coming from a man cynical and truthful as +Alfieri, may make us pause and refuse to affirm that this strange love, +platonic for seven long years, ceased to be a mere passionate friendship +even when it resorted to the secrecy and deceptions of a mere common +intrigue; even when it openly braved, in the semblance of marriage, the +opinion of the world at large. During those many months of solitude in +the villa at Colmar, with no other company than that of his Sienese +servant or secretary and of the horses, whose news he carefully sent, in +letters and sonnets, to the Countess, Alfieri appears for the first time +to have got into a habit of excessive overwork, and to have had the +first serious attack of the gout; overwork and gout, the two things +which were to kill him. A six months' stay in Paris, where society, the +business of printing his works, and the great distance of his lodgings +from the house of Mme. d'Albany, diminished his intellectual work, kept +him up for the moment. But in the following summer of the year 1787, +shortly after he had returned to Colmar with the Countess, and had +welcomed as a guest Tommaso di Caluso, his greatest friend since Gori's +death, he suddenly broke down under a terrific attack of dysentery. +For many days, reduced to a skeleton, ice cold even under burning +applications, and just sufficiently alive to feel in his intensely proud +and masculine nature the cruel degradation of an illness which made him +an object of loathing to himself, Alfieri remained at death's door, +devotedly tended by his beloved and by his friend. + +"It grieved me dreadfully to think that I should die, leaving my lady, +and my friend, and that fame scarcely rough hewn for which I had worked +and frenzied myself so terribly for more than ten years," writes +Alfieri; "for I felt very keenly that of all the writings which I should +leave behind me, not one was completed and finished as it should have +been had time been given me to complete and to perfect according to my +ideas. On the other hand, it was a great consolation to know that, if I +must die, I should die a free man, and between the two best beloved +persons that I had, and whose love and esteem I believed myself to +possess and to deserve." + +Alfieri recovered. But with that illness ends, I think, the period of +his youth, and of his genius, that is to say, of that high-wrought and +passionate austerity and independence of character which was to him +what artistic endowment is to other writers; and with that illness +begins a premature old age, mental and moral, decrepitude gradually +showing itself in a kind of ossification of the whole personality; the +decrepitude which corresponds, on the other side of a brief manhood of +comparative strength and health, to the morally inert and sickly years +of Alfieri's strange youth. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +RUE DE BOURGOYNE. + + +Alfieri's mother, an old lady of extreme simplicity of mind and +gentleness of spirit, was still living at Asti, cheerfully depriving +herself of every luxury in order to devote her fortune, as she devoted +her thoughts and her strength, to the services of the poor and of the +sick. Alfieri, who had left her as a boy, and scarcely seen her except +for a few hours at rare intervals, looked up to her less with the +affection of a son than with the satisfaction of an artist who sees +in the woman of whom he is born the peculiar type of features or +character which he prizes most in womankind; if he, for all his +conscious weaknesses, was more like his own heroes than any man of his +acquaintance, if Mme. d'Albany might be judiciously got up as the Laura +of his affections, the old Countess Alfieri was even more unmistakably +the mother who suited his ideas, the living model of his mother of +Virginia, or his mother of Myrrha. To the Countess Alfieri he had, +already in 1784, introduced the Countess of Albany, whom she invited to +stay with her on her passage through Asti as she returned from Colmar +into Italy. Mme. d'Albany found an excuse for not accepting in the bad +state of the roads, which rendered another route than that of Asti +preferable. Frank and indifferent to the world's opinion as was Mme. +d'Albany, her originally cut and dry intellectual temper hardened by +many years' misery, one can conceive that she should shrink from +accepting the hospitality of Alfieri's mother. Alfieri had doubtless +shown her his mother's letters, and from these letters, as reflected in +his answers, it is clear that the Countess of Albany, returning from +that first stay with her lover at Colmar, would have felt that she was +tacitly deceiving the noble old lady under whose roof she was staying. +For the Countess Alfieri, noble, and Italian, and woman of the +eighteenth century though she was, seems to have been one of those +persons into whose mind, high removed above all worldly concerns, no +experience of vice, of weakness, nay, of mere equivocal situations, can +enter. Whatever she may have seen or heard in her youth of the habits of +women of her century and station, of the virtual divorce which, after a +few years, reigned in aristocratic houses, of authorised lovers and +socially accepted infidelity, seems to have passed out of her memory +and left her mind as innocent as it may have been during her convent +school-days. She had taken great interest in this poor young woman, +maltreated by a drunken husband, and finally saved from his clutches by +the benevolence of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and of a prince of the +church, about whom her son had written to her. That her son experienced +more than her own pity for so worthy an object, that he was at all +compromised in the fate of this virtuous, unhappy lady, never entered +her mind. So little could she understand the muddy things of this +world, that in 1789, when Alfieri was publicly living with Mme. d'Albany +at Colmar, the Countess Alfieri sent him, through his friend Caluso, the +suggestion of a match which she had greatly at heart, between him and a +young lady of Asti, "fifteen or sixteen years old, without any faults, +such as he would certainly like, cultivated, docile, and clever." It is +one of the things which grate upon one most in Alfieri's character, +and which show that however much he might be cast and have chiselled +himself in antique heroic form he was yet made of the same stuff as his +contemporaries, to find that he and his friend Caluso merely amused +themselves immensely at this proposal of marriage, and concocted a +dutiful letter to the old Countess explaining that matrimony was not at +present in his plans. What would Madame Alfieri have thought had she +known the truth! It is very sad to think how, in some cases, the very +noblest and purest, just because they are so completely noble and pure +and above all the base necessities of the world of passion, must be +unable to see, in the doings of others less fortunate than themselves, +those very elements of nobility and purity which redeem the baser +circumstances of their lives. That Mme. d'Albany had loved a man not her +husband, had fled from her husband and united her life to that of her +lover, would be a horror visible to the old Countess' eyes; the platonic +purity, the fidelity, the loyalty of this long and illegitimate love, +would have escaped her. No art is so cruelly contemptuous of whatever of +beauty and sweetness imperfect reality may contain, as the art which is +able to attain an ideal perfection; and thus it is also in matters of +appreciation of man by man and woman by woman. The Countess of Albany +was apparently more frank than Alfieri, because frank rather from +temperament than from pre-occupation about a given ideal of conduct. +That the mother of Alfieri should understand so little seems to have +worried her; and when the unsuspecting old lady asked her sympathisingly +for news of Charles Edward, she wrote back as follows: "As to my husband, +he is better; but I must confess to you, Madame, that I cannot take so +lively an interest in him as you suppose, for he made me, during nine +years, the most wretched woman that ever lived. If I do not hate him it +is a result of Christian charity, and because we are desired to pardon. +He drags out a miserable life, abandoned by all the world, without +relatives or friends, given over to his servants; but he has willed +it thus, since he has never been able to live with anyone. Forgive +me, Madame, for having entered into such details with you; but the +friendship which you have shown towards me obliges me to speak +sincerely." Mme. d'Albany, writing some time before to condole about the +death of Alfieri's half-brother, had tried to insinuate to the old +Countess what her son was for her, and what position she herself might +one day assume in the Alfieri family: "I hope that if circumstances +change, you will not see a family die out to which you are so attached, +and that you will receive the greatest consolation from M. le Comte +Alfieri." Words which could only mean that when the Pretender died Mme. +Alfieri might hope for a daughter-in-law in the writer, and for +grand-children through her. But Madame Alfieri did not understand; +imagining, perhaps, that Mme. d'Albany was alluding to some project of +marriage of her friend M. le Comte Alfieri; and the letter in which the +ill-treated wife's aversion to her husband was first openly revealed +appears to have acted as a thunder-clap, and to have, at least +momentarily, put an end to all correspondence. + +The Countess of Albany was mistaken in supposing that Charles Edward +would die in the arms of mere servants. The very year after her own +separation from Alfieri, the Pretender had called to Florence the +natural daughter born to him by Miss Walkenshaw, and whom he had left, +apparently forgotten for twenty-five years, in the convent at Meaux, +where her mother had taken refuge from his brutalities, even as Louise +d'Albany had taken refuge from them in the convent of the Bianchette. +Partly from a paternal feeling born of the unexpected solitude in which +his wife's flight had left him; partly, doubtless, from a desire to +spite the Countess; he had solemnly, as King of England, legitimated +this daughter, and created her Duchess of Albany: he had made incredible +efforts, abandoning drink, going into the world and keeping open house, +to attach this young woman to him, and to treat her as well as he had +treated his wife ill. + +Charlotte of Albany, a strong, lively, good-humoured, big creature, +devoted to gaiety, effectually reformed her father in his last years, +and turned him, from the brute he had been, to a tolerably well-behaved +old man. But we must not therefore conclude that Charlotte was a better +woman, or a woman more desirous of doing her duty, than Louise d'Albany. +Between the two there was an abyss: Charlotte had been sent for by a man +weary of solitude, smarting under the frightful punishment brought upon +his pride by the flight of his wife; ready to do anything in order not +to be alone and despised by the world; a man broken by illness and age, +weak, hysterical, incapable almost of his former excesses; and Charlotte +was a woman of thirty, she was a daughter, she was free to go where she +would to marry, and her father could buy her presence only at the price +of submission to her tastes and to her desires. How different had it not +been with Louise of Stolberg: united to this man twelve years before, a +mere child of nineteen, given over to him as his wife, his chattel, his +property, to torment and lock up as he might torment and lock up his dog +or his horse; losing all influence over him with every day which made +her less of a novelty and diminished the chance of an heir; and sickened +and alarmed more and more by the obstinate jealousy and drunkenness and +brutality of a man still in the vigour of his odious passions. Still, +the fact remains that while Louise d'Albany was secretly or openly +making light of all social institutions, and living as the mistress, +almost the wife, of Alfieri; this insignificant Charlotte, this +bastard of a Miss Walkenshaw, this woman who had probably never had an +enthusiasm, or an ideal, or a thought, had succeeded in reclaiming +whatever there remained of human in the degraded Charles Edward; had +succeeded in doing the world the service of laying out at least with +decency and decorum this living corpse which had once contained the soul +of a hero, so that posterity might look upon it without too much +contempt and loathing, nay, almost, seeing it so quiet and seemingly +peaceful, with compassion and reverence. + +And when, at the beginning of February 1788, the Countess of Albany, in +the full enjoyment of her love for Alfieri, and of the pleasures of the +most brilliant Parisian society, received the news that on the last day +of January Charles Edward had passed away peacefully in the arms of the +Duchess Charlotte; and that the drink-soiled broken body, from which she +must so often have recoiled in disgust and terror, had been laid out, +with the sad mock royalty of a gilt wooden sceptre and pinchbeck crown, +in state in the cathedral of Frascati; when, I say, the news reached +Paris, this woman, so confident of having been in the right, and who had +written so frankly that if she did not hate her husband it was from mere +Christian charity and the duty of forgiveness, felt herself smitten by +an unexpected grief. + +Alfieri, who witnessed it with astonishment, and to whose cut-and-dry +nature it must have seemed highly mysterious, was, nevertheless, in a +way overawed by this sudden emotion at the death of the man who had +made both lovers so miserable. His appreciation, difficult to so +narrow a temper, of all that may move our sympathy in that, to him, +unintelligible grief, is, I think, one of the facts in his life which +brings this strange, artificial, heroic, admirable, yet repulsive +character, most within reach of our affection; as that same grief, so +unexpected by herself, at what was after all her final deliverance, is, +together with the letter to Alfieri's mother, telling of her hatred to +Charles Edward, and that exclamation in the hysterical love-letter at +Siena--"O God! how this degrades the soul!"--one of the things which +persuade us that this woman, whom we shall see inconsistent, worldly, +and cynical, did really possess at bottom what her lover called "a most +upright and sincere and incomparable soul." + +"For the present," wrote Alfieri to his Sienese friends on the occasion +of Charles Edward's death, "nothing will be altered in our mode of +life." In other words, the Countess of Albany and her lover, established +publicly beneath the same roof in Paris, did not intend getting married. +Whatever hopes may have filled Mme. d'Albany's heart when, years before, +she had hinted to Alfieri's mother that when certain circumstances +changed, the Alfieri family should be saved from extinction; whatever +ideas Alfieri had had in his mind when he prayed in a sonnet for the +happy day when he might call his love holy; whatever intention of +repairing the injury done to social institutions, may at one time have +mingled with the lovers' remorse and the lovers' temptations,--had now +been completely forgotten. We have seen how, more than once, love, +however self-restrained, had induced Alfieri to put aside all his +Republican sternness and truthfulness, and to cringe before people +whom he thoroughly despised; we cannot easily forget that ignominious +stroking of the Brutus poet's cheek by Pope Pius VI. We shall now see +how this peculiar sort of Roman and stoical virtue, cultivated by +Alfieri in himself and in his beloved as the one admirable thing in +the world, a strange exotic in this eighteenth-century baseness, had +nevertheless withered in several of its branches, beaten by the wind +of illegitimate passion, and dried up by the callousness of an immoral +state of society: an exotic, or rather a precocious moral variety, come +before its season, and bleached and warped like a winter flower. + +Alfieri and the Countess did not get married, simply, I think, because +they did not care to get married; because marriage would entail +reorganisation of a mode of life which had somehow organised itself; +because it would give a common-place prose solution to what appeared a +romantic and exceptional story; and finally because it might necessitate +certain losses in the way of money, of comfort, and of rank. + +One sees throughout all his autobiography and letters that Alfieri drew +a sharp distinction between love and marriage; that he conceived +marriage as the act of a man who sets up shop, so to say, in his native +place, goes in for having children, for being master in his own house, +administering and increasing his estates, and generally devoting himself +to the advancement of his family. As such Alfieri, who was essentially a +routinist, respected and approved of marriage; and anything different +would have struck his martinet, rule and compass, mind, as ridiculous +and contemptible. In giving up his fortune to his sister, Alfieri had +deliberately cut himself off from the possibility of such a marriage; +moreover, putting aside the financial question, his notion of the +liberty of a writer, who must be able to speak freely against any +government, was incompatible with his notion of a father of a family, +settled in dignity in his ancestral palace; and finally, I feel +perfectly persuaded that in the mind of Alfieri, which saw things only +in sharpest black and white contrasts, there existed a still more +complete incompatibility between a woman like the Countess of Albany, +and a wife such as he conceived a wife: to marry Mme. d'Albany would be +to degrade a poetical ideal into vulgar domesticity, and at the same +time to frightfully depart from the normal type of matrimony, which +required that the man be absolute master, and not afflicted with any +sort of sentimental respect for his better half. + +According to Alfieri, there were two possibilities for the ideal man: a +handsome and highly respectable marriage with a girl twenty years his +junior, fresh from the convent, provided with the right number of +heraldic quarterings, acres, diamonds, and domestic virtues, and who +would bear him, in deep awe for his unapproachable superiority, five or +six robust children; and a romantic connexion with a married woman or a +widow, a woman all passion and intellect and aspiration, with whom he +should go through a course of mutual soul improvement, who should be the +sharer of all his higher life, and whom he would diligently deck out as +a Beatrice or a Laura in the eyes of society. + +The Countess of Albany did not fit into the first ideal; nor, for the +matter of that, did Alfieri, poor, expatriated, mad for independence, +engrossed in literature, fit into it himself; and both, as it happened, +fitted in perfectly to the second ideal possibility. To get married with +a view to turning into domestic beings, would be a failure, a trouble, +an interruption, a desecration, and a bore; to get married merely to go +on as they were at present, would, in the eyes of Alfieri, have been a +profanation of the poetry of their situation, a perfectly unnecessary +piece of humbug. + +Such were, doubtless, Alfieri's views of the case. Mme. d'Albany, on +the other hand, had evidently no vocation as a housewife or a mother; +marriage was full of disagreeable associations to her: a husband +might beat one, and a lover might not. She, probably, also, guessed +instinctively that to Alfieri a Laura must always be a mere mistress, +and a wife must always be a mere Griselda; she knew his cut-and-dry +views, his frightful power of carrying theory into practice; she may +have guessed that the most respectful of lovers would in his case make +the most tyrannical of husbands. But while Alfieri doubtless brought +Mme. d'Albany to share his abstract reasons, Mme. d'Albany probably +brought home to him her own more practical ones. Alfieri, we must +remember, had been a man of excessive social vanity; and much as he +despised mankind, he certainly still liked to enjoy its admiring +consideration. Mme. d'Albany, on the other hand, had been brought up in +the full worldliness of a canoness of Ste. Wandru, and had grown +accustomed to a certain amount of state and of luxury; and these worldly +tendencies, thrown into the background by the passion, the poetry which +sprang up with the irresistible force of a pressed down spring during +her married misery, had returned to her as years went on, and as passion +cooled and poetry diminished. Now marriage would probably involve a +great risk of a diminution of income, since the Pope and the Court of +France might easily refuse to support Charles Edward's widow once she +had ceased to be a Stuart; and it must inevitably mean an end to a +quasi-regal mode of life to which the widow of the Pretender could lay +claim, but the wife of a Piedmontese noble could not. It is one of the +various meannesses, committed quite unconsciously by Mme. d'Albany, and +apparently not censured by the people of the eighteenth century, that, +so far from being anxious to shake off all vestiges of her hateful +married life, the Countess of Albany, on the contrary, seemed determined +to enjoy, so to speak, her money's worth; to get whatever advantages had +been bought at the price of her marriage with Charles Edward. Mme. +d'Albany enjoyed being the widow of a kind of sovereign. Rather +easy-going and familiar by nature, she nevertheless assumed towards +strangers a certain queenly haughtiness which frequently gave offence; +and Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, who was introduced at her house in 1788, +found, to his surprise, that all the plate belonging to Mme. d'Albany +was engraved with the royal arms of England; that guests were conducted +through an ante-room in which stood a royal throne also emblazoned with +the arms of England; nay, that the servants had orders to address the +lady of the house by the title of a queen: a state of things whose +institution by a woman who affected nobility of sentiment and who made +no secret of her hatred of Charles Edward, whose toleration by a man +who scorned the world and abhorred royalty, is one of those strange +anomalies which teach us the enormous advance in self-respect and +self-consistency due to social and democratic progress, an improvement +which separates in feeling even the most mediocre and worldly men and +women of to-day from the most high-minded and eccentric men and women of +a century ago. To marry Alfieri would mean, for the Countess of Albany, +to risk part of her fortune and to relinquish her royal state, as well +as to sink into a mere humdrum housewife. Hence, in both parties +concerned, a variety of reasons, contemptible in our eyes, excellent in +their own, against legitimating their connection. And, on the other hand, +no corresponding inducement. Why should they get married? The Countess, +going in state every Sunday to a convent where she was received with +royal honours, Alfieri writing to his mother that although he was not +regular at confession, he was yet provided with a most austere and +worthy spiritual director in case of need, neither of them had the +smallest belief in Christianity nor in its sacraments. To please whom +should they marry, pray? To please religion? Why, they had none. To +please society? Why, society, in this Paris of the year 1788, at least +such aristocratic society as they cared to see, consisted entirely +either of devoted couples of high-minded lovers each with a husband or +wife somewhere in the background, or of even more interesting triangular +arrangements of high-minded and devoted wife, husband, and lover, +all living together on charming terms, and provided, in case of +disagreement, each with a _lettre de cachet_ which should lock the other +up in the Bastille. A Queen of England by right divine, keeping open +house in company with a ferociously republican Piedmontese poet, was +indeed a new and perhaps a questionable case; but the pre-revolutionary +society of Paris was too philosophical to be surprised at anything; and, +after very little hesitation, resorted to the charming Albany-Alfieri +hotel in the Rue de Bourgoyne. Now, if the well-born and amusing people +in Paris did not insist upon Alfieri and the Countess getting married, +why should they go out of their way to do so? We good people of the +nineteenth century should have liked them the better; but then, you see, +it was the peculiarity of the men and women of the eighteenth century to +be quite unable to conceive that the men and women of the nineteenth +century would be in the least different from themselves. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +BEFORE THE STORM. + + +The well-born and amusing people of the end of the eighteenth and +beginning of the nineteenth century did not stickle at the question +of the marriage. They flocked to the hotel of the Rue de Bourgoyne, +attracted by the peculiar cosmopolitan charm, the very undeniable +talent for society, the extraordinary intellectual superiority of Mme. +d'Albany; attracted, also, by a certain easy-going and half-motherly +kindliness which seems, to all those who wanted sympathy, to have been +quite irresistible. It was the moment of the great fermentation, when +even trifling things and trifling people seemed to boil and seethe with +importance; when cold-hearted people were suddenly full of tenderness +and chivalry, selfish people full of generosity, prosaic people full of +poetry, and mediocre people full of genius: the brief carnival-week +of the old world, when men and women masqueraded in all manner of +outlandish and antiquated thoughts and feelings, and enjoyed the +excitement of dressing-up so much that they actually believed themselves +for the moment to be what they pretended: it was the brief moment, +grotesque and pathetic, when the doomed classes of society, who were +fatally going to be exterminated for their long selfishness and +indifference, enthusiastically caught up pick-axe and shovel and tore +down the bricks of the edifice which was destined to fall and to crush +them all beneath its ruins. + +All these men and women, their deep in-born corruption momentarily +transfigured by this enthusiasm for liberty, for equality, for sentiment, +for austerity, which mingled oddly with their childish pleasure in all +new things, in mesmerism, in America, in electricity, in Montgolfier +balloons, with their habitual pleasure in all their big and small futile +and wicked pleasures of worldliness;--all these men and women, these +_morituri_ delighted at the preparations, the scaffoldings, red clothes, +black crape, torches and drums and bugles, for their own execution, all +assembled at that hotel of the Rue de Bourgoyne. + +A brilliant crowd of ministers and diplomatists, and artists and +pamphleteers, and wits and beautiful women; perishable and perished +things, out of which we must select one or two, either as types of that +which has perished, or as types of the imperishable; and the perished, +the amiable and beautiful women, the amusing and brilliantly-improvising +orators and philosophers of the half-hour, are often that which, could +we have chosen, we should have preserved. Most notable among the women, +the young daughter of Necker, the wife of the Swedish ambassador, Mme. +la Baronne de Stael Holstein: a rather mannish superb sort of creature, +with shoulders and arms compensating for thick swarthy features; eyes +like volcanoes; the laugh of the most kind-hearted of children; the +stride, the attitude, with her hands for ever behind the back, of an +unceremonious man; a young woman already accounted a genius, and felt to +be a moral force. Next to her a snub, drab-coloured Livonian, with +northern eyes telling of future mysticism, that Mme. de Kruedener, as yet +noted only for the droll contrast of her enthusiasm for St. Pierre and +the simplicity of nature with her quarterly bills of twenty thousand +francs from Mdlle. Bertin, the Queen's milliner; but later to be famous +for her literary and religious vagaries, her influence on Mme. de Stael, +her strange influence on Alexander of Russia. Near her, doubtless, that +fascinating Suard, in the convent of whose sister Mme. de Kruedener was +wont to spend a month in religious exercises, thanking God, at the foot +of the altar, for giving her a sister like Mdlle. Suard, and a lover +like Suard himself. As yet but little noticed, except as the pet friend, +the "younger sister" of Mme. d'Albany, a Mme. de Flahault, later married +to the Portuguese Souza; a simple-natured little woman, adoring her +children and the roses in her garden, and who, if I may judge by the +letters which, many, many years later, she addressed to Mme. d'Albany, +would be the woman of all those one would rather resuscitate for a +friend, leaving Mmes. de Stael and de Kruedener quiet in their coffins. +Further on, the delicate and charming Pauline de Beaumont, who was to be +the Egeria of Joubert and the tenderly-beloved friend of Chateaubriand; +and a host of women notable in those days for wit or heart or looks, +wherewith to make a new Ballade of Dead Ladies, much sadder than the one +of Villon: "But where are the snows of yester-year?" + +Round about these ladies an even greater number of men of what were, or +passed for, eminent qualities; political for the most part, or busied +with the new science of economy, like the Trudaines; and most notable +among them, as the typical victim of genius of the Reign of Terror, poor +Andre Chenier, his exquisite imitations of Theocritus still waiting to +be sorted and annotated in prison; and the typical blood-maniac of +genius, the painter David, who was to startle Mme. d'Albany's guests, +soon after the 10th August, by wishing that the Fishwives had stuck +Marie Antoinette's head without more ado upon a pike. Imagine all these +people assembled in order to hear M. de Beaumarchais, in the full glory +of his millions and his wonderful garden, give a first reading of his +_Mere Coupable_, after inviting them to prepare themselves to weep +(which was easy in those days of soft hearts) "_a plein canal_." Or else +listening to the cold and solemn M. de Condorcet, prophesying the time +when science shall have abolished suffering and shall abolish death; +little dreaming of those days of wandering without food, of those nights +in the quarries of Montrouge, of that little bottle of poison, the only +thing that science could give to abolish his suffering. + +To all these great and illustrious people the Countess of Albany--I had +almost said the Queen of England--introduced her "incomparable friend" +(style then in vogue) Count Vittorio Alfieri; and all of them doubtless +took a great interest in him as her lover, and a little interest in him +as _the_ great poet of Italy; not certainly without wondering--amiable +people as they were, and persuaded that France and Paris alone +existed--that Mme. d'Albany should find anything to love in this +particularly rude and disagreeable man, and that a country like Italy +should have the impudence to set up a poet of its own. The Countess of +Albany, made to be a leader of intellectual society, was happy; but +Alfieri was not. Ever since his childhood, when a French dancing-master +had vainly tried to unstiffen his rigid person, he had mortally hated +the French nation; ever since his first boyish travels he had loathed +Paris as the sewer, the _cloaca maxima_ (the expression is his own) of +the world; his whole life had been a struggle with the French manners, +the French language, which had permeated Piedmont; one of the chief +merits of the new drama he had conceived was (in his own eyes) to sweep +Corneille, Racine, and particularly Voltaire, his arch-aversion +Voltaire, off the stage. + +Alfieri, with his faults and his virtues, was specially constructed, if +I may use the expression, to ignore all the good points, and to feel +with hysterical sensitiveness all the bad ones, of the French nation; +and more especially of the French nation of the pre-revolutionary and +revolutionary era. Alfieri's reality and Alfieri's ideal were austerity, +inflexibility, pride and contemptuousness of character, coldness, +roughness, decision of manner, curtness, reticence, and absolute +truthfulness of speech; above all, no consideration for other folks' +likings and dislikings, no mercy for their foibles. His ideal, even more +so than the ideal of other idealising minds, was the mere outcome of +himself; it contained his faults as well as his virtues. Now all that +fell short of, or went beyond, his ideal--that is to say, himself--was +abomination in Alfieri's eyes. Consequently France and the French, +all the nobility, the wit, the sentiment, the warm-heartedness, the +enthusiasm, the wide-mindedness, the childishness, the frivolity, the +instability, the disrespectfulness, the sentimentality, the high +falutinism, the superficiality, the looseness of principle, everything +that made up the greatness and littleness of the France of the end of +last century, everything which will make up the greatness and littleness +of France, the glories and weaknesses which the world must love, to the +end of time; all these things were abhorrent to Alfieri; and Alfieri, +when once he disliked a person or a thing, justly or unjustly, could +only increase but never diminish his dislike. Let us look at this +matter, which is instructive to all persons whose nobility of character +runs to injustice, a little closer; it will help us to understand the +_Misogallo_, the extraordinary apostasy which, quite unconsciously, +Alfieri was later to commit towards the principle of freedom. Alfieri, +intensely Italian, if mediaeval and peasant Italy may give us the +Italian type, in a certain silent or rather inarticulate violence of +temper--violence which roars and yells and stabs and strangles, but +which never talks, and much less argues--could not endure the particular +sort of excitement which surrounded him in France; excitement mainly +cerebral, heroism or villainy resulting, but only as the outcome of +argument and definition of principle and of that mixture of logic and +rhetoric called by the French _des mots_. Alfieri was not a reasoning +mind, he was not an eloquent man; above all, he was not a witty man; his +satirical efforts are so many blows upon an opponent's head; they are +almost physical brutalities; there is nothing clever or funny about +them. In such a society as this Parisian society of the years '87, '88, +'89, '90, he must have been at a continual disadvantage; and at a +disadvantage which he felt keenly, but which he felt, also, that +any remarkable piece of Alfierism which would have moved Italy to +admiration, such as glaring, or stalking off in silence, or punching a +man's head, could only increase. To feel himself at a disadvantage on +account of his very virtues, and with people whom those virtues did +not impress, must have been most intolerable to a man as vain and +self-conscious as Alfieri, and to this was added the sense that, +from mere ignorance of the language (the language whose nobility, as +contrasted with the "low, plebeian, nasal disgustingness" of French, he +so often descanted on) in which he wrote, it was quite impossible for +these people to be reduced to their right place and right mind by the +crushing superiority of his dramatic genius. He, who hungered and +thirsted for glory, what glory could he hope for among all these monkeys +of Frenchmen, jabbering and gesticulating about their States-General, +their Montgolfier, their St. Pierre, their Condorcet, their Parny, their +Necker, who had not even the decent feeling to know Italian, and who +bowed and smiled and doubtless mixed him up with Metastasio and Goldoni +when introduced by the Countess to so odd a piece of provincialism as an +Italian poet. "Does Monsieur write comedies or tragedies?" One fancies +one can hear the politely indifferent question put with a charming +smile by some powdered and embroidered French wit to Mme. d'Albany in +Alfieri's hearing; nay, to Alfieri himself. + +Mixed with such meaner, though unconscious motives for dissatisfaction, +must have been the sense, intolerable to a man like Alfieri, of the +horrid and grotesque jumble of good and bad, of real and false, not +merely in the revolutionary movement itself, but in all these men of the +_ancien regime_ who initiated it. Alfieri conceived liberty from the +purely antique, or, if you prefer, pseudo-antique, point of view; it +was to him the final cause of the world; the aim of all struggles; to +be free was the one and only desideratum, to be master of one's own +thoughts, actions, and words, merely for the sake of such mastery. The +practical advantages of liberty entirely escaped him, as did the +practical disadvantages of tyranny; nay, one can almost imagine that +had liberty involved absolute misery for all men, and tyranny absolute +happiness, Alfieri would have chosen liberty. To this pseudo-Roman +and intensely patrician stoic, who had never known privation or +injustice towards himself, and scarcely noticed it towards others, +the humanitarian, the philanthropic movement, characteristic of the +eighteenth century, and which was the strong impulse of the revolution, +was absolutely incomprehensible. Alfieri was, in the sense of certain +ancients, a hard-hearted man, indifferent, blind and deaf to suffering. +That a man of education and mind, a gentleman, should have to sweep the +ground with his hat on the passage of another man, because that other +happened to wear a ribbon and a star; that he should be liable to exile, +to imprisonment, for a truthful statement of his opinion: these were to +Alfieri the insupportable things of tyranny. But that a man in wooden +shoes and a torn smock frock, sleeping between the pigs and the cows on +the damp clay floor, eating bread mainly composed of straw, should have +all the profits of his hard labour taken from him in taxes, while +another man, a splendid gentleman covered over with gold, riding over +acres of his land with his hounds, or a fat priest dressed in silk, +snoozing over his Lucullus dinner, should be exempt from taxation and +empowered to starve, rob, beat, or hang the peasant: such a thing as +this did not fall within the range of Alfieri's feelings. To his mind, +for ever wrapped in an intellectual toga, there was no tragedy in mere +misery; there was no injustice in mere cruelty, or rather misery, +cruelty, nay, all their allied evils, ignorance, brutality, sickness, +superstition, vice, were unknown to him. Hence, as I have said, all the +philanthropic side of the revolutionary movement was lost to him; just +as the defence of Labarre, the vindication of Calas, never disturbed +the current of his contempt for Voltaire. So also the abolition of +privileges, the secularisation of church property, the equalisation of +legal punishment, the abrogation of barbarous laws, the liberation of +slaves; all these things, which stirred even the most corrupt and +apathetic minds of the late eighteenth century, seemed merely so much +declamation to Alfieri. To him, who could conceive no virtues beyond +independent truthfulness, such things were mere sentimental trash, mere +hypocritical nonsense beneath which base men hid their baseness. And +the baseness, unhappily, was there: baseness of absolute corruption, +or of scandalous levity, even in the noblest. To Alfieri, a man like +Beaumarchais, for all his quick philanthropy, his audacious outspokenness, +must have seemed base, with his background of money-jobbing, of dirty +diplomatic work, of legal squabbles. How much more such a man as +Mirabeau, with his heroic resolution, his heroic kindliness, his whole +Titan nature, carous, eaten into by a hundred mean vices. That Mirabeau +should have gained his bread writing libels and obscene novels, meant to +Alfieri not that a man born in corruption and tainted thereby had, by +the force of his genius, by the force of the great humanitarian +movement, raised himself as morally high as he had hitherto grovelled +morally low; it merely meant that the immaculate name of hero was +degraded by a foul writer. + +From such figures as these Alfieri turned away in indignant disgust. The +great movement of the eighteenth century seemed to him a mere stirring +and splashing in a noisome pool, in that _cloaca maxima_, as he had +called it. + +Already before settling in Paris in 1787, he had written to his Sienese +friends that, were it not for the necessity of attending to the printing +of his works (to print which permission would not be obtainable in +Italy), he would rather have established himself at Prats, at Colle, +at Buonconvento, at any little town of two thousand inhabitants near +Florence or Siena. Surrounded by, in daily contact with, some of the +noblest minds of the century, nay, of any century, by people like Mme. +de Stael, Andre Chenier, Condorcet, Mirabeau, Alfieri could write, with +a sort of bitter pleasure at his own narrow-mindedness: "Now I am among +a million of men, and not one of them that is worth Gori's little +finger." + +I am almost prepared to say that Alfieri really felt as if living in +Paris, among such people and at such a moment, was a sort of saintly +sacrifice, the crowning heroism of his life, which he made in order to +print his books; that he endured the contact of this plague-stricken +city, merely because he knew that unless he corrected a certain number +of manuscript pages, and revised a certain number of proof-sheets, the +world would be defrauded of the great and sovereign antidote to all such +baseness as this in the shape of his own complete works. + +Writing to his mother towards the end of the year 1788, he mentions +contemptuously the excitement and enthusiasm created by the approaching +election of the States-General, and adds calmly: "But all these sort of +things interest me very little; and I give my attention only to the +correction of my proofs, a piece of work with which I am pretty well +half through." + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +ENGLAND. + + +The contradictions in complex and self-contradictory characters like +those of the Frenchmen of the early revolution can be easily explained, +and, say what we will, must be easily pardoned: rich natures, creatures +of impulse, intensely sensitive to external influences, we feel that +it is to the very richness of nature, the warmth of impulse, the +susceptibility to influence, that we owe not merely these men's virtues +but their vices. But the contradictions of the self-righteous are an +afflicting spectacle, over which we would fain draw the veil: there is +no room in a narrow nature for any flagrant violation of its own ideals +to be stuffed away unnoticed in a corner. And now we come to one of the +strangest self-contradictions in the history of Mme. d'Albany, that is +to say, of her lord and master Alfieri. + +The revision and printing of Alfieri's works had been brought to an end; +but neither he nor the Countess seems to have contemplated a return to +Italy. The fact was that they were both of them retained by money +matters. A proportion of Mme. d'Albany's income consisted in the pension +which she received from the French Court; and the greater part of +Alfieri's income consisted in certain moneys made over to him by his +sister as the capital of his life pension, and which he had invested in +French funds. + +By the year 1791, the French Court and the French funds had got to be +very shaky; and those who depended upon them did not dare go to any +distance, lest on their return they should find nothing to claim, or no +one to claim from. Hence the necessity for Alfieri and the Countess to +remain in France, or, at least, hover about near it. + +Now, whether the unsettled state of French affairs suggested to Mme. +d'Albany, and through her to Alfieri, that it would be wise to see what +sort of home, nay, perhaps, what sort of pecuniary assistance, might be +found elsewhere, I cannot tell; but this much is certain, that on the +19th May, 1791, Horace Walpole wrote as follows to Miss Barry:-- + +"The Countess of Albany is not only in England, in London, but at this +very moment, I believe, in the palace of St. James; not restored by as +rapid a revolution as the French, but, as was observed at supper at +Lady Mount Edgecumbe's, by that topsy-turvihood that characterises the +present age. Within these two days the Pope has been burnt at Paris; +Mme. du Barry, mistress of Louis Quinze, has dined with the Lord Mayor +of London; and the Pretender's widow is presented to the Queen of Great +Britain." + +That we should have to learn so striking an episode of the journey to +England from the letters of a total stranger, who noticed it as a mere +piece of gossip, while the memoirs of Alfieri, who accompanied Mme. +d'Albany to England, are perfectly silent on the subject, is, to say the +least of it, a suspicious circumstance. + +As he grew old, Alfieri seems to have lost that power, nay that +irresistible desire, of speaking the truth and the whole truth which +made him record with burning shame the caress of Pius VI. Perhaps, on +the other hand, Alfieri, who, after all, was but a sorry mixture of +an ancient Roman and a man of the eighteenth century, thought that a +certain amount of baseness and dirt-eating, quite degrading in a man, +might be permitted to a woman, even to the lady of his thoughts. And +still I cannot help thinking that Alfieri, who could certainly, with his +strong will, have prevented the Countess from demeaning herself, and in +so far demeaning also his love for her, quietly abetted this step, and +then as quietly consigned it to oblivion. + +But oblivion did not depend upon registration, or non-registration, +in Alfieri's memoirs. The letters of Walpole, the memoirs of Hannah +More, the political correspondence collected by Lord Stanhope, furnish +abundant detail of this affair. The Countess of Albany was introduced +by her relation, or connexion, the young Countess of Aylesbury, and +announced by her maiden name of Princess of Stolberg. Horace Walpole's +informant, who stood close by, told him that she was "well-dressed, and +not at all embarrassed." George III. and his sons talked a good deal to +her, about her passage, her stay in England, and similar matters; but +the princesses none of them said a word; and we hear that Queen Charlotte +"looked at her earnestly." The strait-laced wife of George III. had +probably consented to receive the Pretender's widow, only because this +ceremony was a sort of second burial of Charles Edward, a burial of all +the claims, the pride of the Stuarts; but she felt presumably no great +cordiality towards a woman who had run away from her husband, who was +travelling in England with her lover; and who, while affecting royal +state in her own house, could crave the honour of being received by the +family of the usurper. + +Mme. d'Albany was not abashed: she seems to have made up her mind to get +all she could out of royal friendliness. She accepted a seat in the +King's box at the opera; nay, she accepted a seat at the foot of the +throne ("the throne she might once have expected to mount," remarks +Hannah More), on the occasion of the King's speech in the House of +Lords. It was the 10th of June, the birthday of Prince Charlie; and the +woman who sat there so unconcernedly, kept a throne with the British +arms in her ante-room, and made her servants address her as a Queen! + +What were Alfieri's feelings when Mme. d'Albany came home in her Court +toilette, and told him of all these fine doings? The more we try to +conceive certain things, the more inconceivable they become: it is like +straining to see what may be hidden at the bottom of a very deep well. +In the case of Alfieri, I think we may add that the well was empty. +Since his illness at Colmar, he had aged in the most extraordinary way: +the process of dessication and ossification of his moral nerves and +muscles, which, as I have said, was the form that premature decrepitude +took in this abnormal man, had begun. The creative power was extinct in +him, both as regards his works and himself: there was no possibility of +anything new, of any response of this wooden nature to new circumstances. +He had attained to the age of forty-two without any particular feelings +such as could fit into this present case, and the result was that he +probably had no feelings. The Countess of Albany was the ideal woman he +had enshrined her as such ages ago, and an ideal woman could not change, +could not commit an impropriety, least of all in his eyes. If she had +condescended to ridiculous meanness in order to secure for herself an +opening in English society, a subsidy from the English Government +(apparently already suggested at that time, but granted only many years +later) in case of a general break-up of French things; if she had done +this, it was no concern of Alfieri: Mme. d'Albany had been patented as +the ideal woman. As to him, why should he condescend to think about +state receptions, galas, pensions, kings and queens, and similar low +things? He had put such vanities behind him long ago. + +Alfieri and the Countess made a tour through England, and projected +a tour through Scotland. Whether the climate, the manners, the aspect +of England and its inhabitants really disappointed the perhaps ideal +notions she had formed; or whether, perhaps, she was a little bit put +out of sorts by no pension being granted, and by a possible coldness of +British matrons towards a widow travelling about with an Italian poet, +it is not for me to decide. But her impressions of England, as recorded +in a note-book now at the Musee Fabre at Montpellier, are certainly not +those of a person who has received a good welcome: + +"Although I knew," she says, repeating the stale platitudes (or perhaps +the true impressions?) of all foreigners, "that the English were +melancholy, I had not imagined that life in their capital would be so to +the point which I experienced it. No sort of society, and a quantity of +crowds ... As they spend nine months in the country--the family alone, +or with only a very few friends--they like, when they come to town, to +throw themselves into the vortex. Women are never at home. The whole +early part of the day, which begins at two (for, going to bed at four +in the morning, they rise only at mid-day), is spent in visits and +exercise, for the English require, and their climate absolutely +necessitates, a great deal of exercise. The coal smoke, the constant +absence of sunshine, the heavy food and drink, make movement a necessity +to them.... If England had an oppressive Government, this country and +its inhabitants would be the lowest in the universe: a bad climate, bad +soil, hence no sort of taste; it is only the excellence of the political +constitution which renders it inhabitable. The nation is melancholy, +without any imagination, even without wit; the dominant characteristic +is a desire for money." + +The same note as that even of such a man as Taine. The almost morbid +love of beauty which a civilisation, whose outward expression are the +lines and lines of black boxes, with slits for doors and windows of +Bloomsbury, produced in men like Coleridge, Blake, and Turner, naturally +escaped Mme. d'Albany; but the second great rebellion of imagination +and love of beauty, the rebellion led by Madox Brown and Morris, and +Rossetti and Burne Jones, escaped Taine. But of all the things which +most offended this quasi-Queen of England in our civilisation, the +social arrangements did so most of all. With the instinct of a woman who +has lived a by no means regular life in the midst of a society far worse +than herself, with the instinct of one of those strange pseudo-French +Continental mongrels with whom age always brings cynicism, she tries to +account for the virtue of Englishwomen by accidental, and often rather +nasty, necessities. Mme. d'Albany writes with the freedom and precision +of a Continental woman of the world of eighty years ago; and her remarks +lose too much or gain too much by translation into our chaster language. +"The charm of intimate society," she winds up, conscious of the charms +of her own little salon full of clever men and pretty women all +well-acquainted with each other--"the charm of intimate society is +unknown in England." + +In short, the sooner England be quitted, the better. Political, +or rather financial circumstances--that is to say, the frightful +worthlessness of French money (and Alfieri's and her money came mainly +from France), made a return to Paris urgent. + +An incident, as curious perhaps as that of Mme. d'Albany's presentation +at Court, but which, unlike that, Alfieri has not thought fit to +suppress, marked their departure from England. As Alfieri, who had +preceded the Countess by a few minutes to see whether the luggage had +been properly stored on the ship at Dover, turned to go and meet her, +his eyes suddenly fell with a start of recognition upon a woman standing +on the landing-place. She was not young, but still very handsome, as +some of us may know her from Gainsborough's portrait; and she was no +other than Penelope Lady Ligonier, for whom Alfieri had been so mad +twenty years before, for whom he had fought his famous duel in St. +James' Park, and got himself disgracefully mixed up in a peculiarly +disgraceful divorce suit. He had several times inquired after her, and +always in vain; and now he would scarcely have believed his eyes had his +former mistress not given him a smile of recognition. Alfieri was +terribly upset. The sight of this ghost from out of a disgraceful past, +coming to haunt what he considered a dignified present, seems fairly to +have terrified him; he ran back into the ship and dared not go to meet +Mme. d'Albany, lest in so doing he should meet Lady Ligonier. Presently, +Mme. d'Albany came on board. With the indifference of a woman of the +world, of that easy-goingness which was rapidly effacing in her the +romantic victim of Charles Edward, she told Alfieri that the friends +who had escorted her to the ship (and who appear to have perfectly +understood the temper of the Countess) had pointed out his former flame +and entertained her with a brief biography of her predecessor in +Alfieri's heart. Mme. d'Albany took it all as a matter of course: she +was probably no longer at all in love with Alfieri, but she admired his +genius and character as much and more than ever; and was probably +beginning to develop a certain good-natured, half-motherly acquiescence +in his eccentricities, such as women who have suffered much, and grown +stout and strong, and cynically optimistic now that suffering is over, +are apt to develop towards people accustomed to resort to them, like +sick children, in all their ups and downs of temper. + +"Between us," says Alfieri, "there was never any falsehood, or reticence, +or coolness, or quarrel";--and, indeed, when a woman, such as Mme. +d'Albany must have been at the age of forty, has once determined to +adore and humour a particular individual in every single possible thing, +all such painful results of more sensitive passion naturally become +unnecessary. If Mme. d'Albany merely smiled over bygone follies, Alfieri +had been put into great agitation by the sight of Lady Ligonier. From +Calais he sent her a letter, of which no copy has been preserved, but +which, according to his account, "was full, not indeed of love, but of +a deep and sincere emotion at seeing her still leading a wandering life +very unsuited to her birth and position; and of pain in thinking that I, +although innocently (that "although innocently", on the part of a man +who had been the cause of her scandalous downfall, is perfectly charming +in its simple revelation of Continental morals), might have been the +cause or the pretext thereof." + +Lady Ligonier's answer came to hand in Brussels. Written in bad French, +it answered Alfieri's tragic grandiloquence with a cold civility, which +shows how deeply his magnanimous compassion had wounded a woman who felt +herself to be no more really corrupt than he. + +"Monsieur," so runs the letter, "you could not doubt that the expression +of your remembrance of me, and of the interest which you kindly take in +my lot, would be duly appreciated and received gratefully by me; the +more especially as I cannot consider you as the cause of my unhappiness, +since I am not unhappy, although the uprightness of your soul makes you +fear that I am. You were, on the contrary, the agent of my liberation +from a world for which I was in no way suited, and which I have not +for a moment regretted.... I am in the enjoyment of perfect health, +increased by liberty and peace of mind. I seek the society only of +simple and virtuous persons without pretensions either to particular +genius or to particular learning; and besides such society I entertain +myself with books, drawing, music, &c. But what constitutes the basis of +real happiness and satisfaction is the friendship and unalterable love +of a brother whom I have always loved more than the whole world, and who +possesses the best of hearts." "I hear," goes on Lady Ligonier, after a +few compliments on Alfieri's literary fame, "that you are attached to +the Princess with whom you are travelling, whose amiable and clever +physiognomy seems indeed formed for the happiness of a soul as sensitive +and delicate as yours. I am also told that she is afraid of you: I +recognise you there. Without wishing, or perhaps even knowing it, you +have an irresistible ascendancy over all who are attached to you." + +Was it this disrespectful hint concerning what he wished the world to +consider as his ideal love for Mme. d'Albany, or was it Lady Ligonier's +determination to let him know that desertion by him had made her neither +more disreputable nor more unhappy than before, I cannot tell; but +certain it is that something in this letter appears to have put Alfieri, +who had not objected to Mme. d'Albany's mean behaviour towards George +III., into a condition of ruffled virtue and dignity. + +"I copy this letter," he writes in his memoirs, "in order to give an +idea of this woman's eccentric and obstinately evilly-inclined +character." + +Did it never occur to Alfieri that his own character, whose faults +during youth he so keenly appreciated, was not improving with years? + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +THE MISOGALLO. + + +Alfieri and Madame d'Albany were scarcely back in Paris, and settled in +a new house, when the disorders in Paris and the movements of the +Imperial troops on the frontier began to make the situation of +foreigners difficult and dangerous. The storming of the Tuileries, the +great slaughter of the 10th August 1792, admonished them to sacrifice +everything to their safety. With considerable difficulty a passport for +the Countess had been obtained from the Swedish Minister, one for +Alfieri from the Venetian Resident (almost the only diplomatic +representatives, says Alfieri, who still remained to that ghost of a +king), and a passport for each of them and for each of their servants +from their communal section. Departure was fixed for the 20th August, +but Alfieri's black presentiments hastened it to the 18th. Arrived at +the Barriere Blanche, on the road to Calais, passports were examined by +two or three soldiers of the National Guard, and the gates were on the +point of being opened to let the two heavily-loaded carriages pass, when +suddenly, from out of a neighbouring pot-house, rushed some twenty-five +or thirty ruffians, ragged, drunken, and furious. They surrounded the +carriages, yelling that all the rich were running away and leaving them +to starve without work; and a crowd rapidly formed round them and the +National Guards, who wanted the travellers to be permitted to pass on. +Alfieri jumps out of the carriage, brandishing his seven passports, and +throws himself, a long, lean, red-haired man, fiercely gesticulating and +yelling at the top of his voice, among the crowd, forcing this man and +that to read the passports, crying frantically, "Look! Listen! Name +Alfieri. Italian and not French! Tall, thin, pale, red-haired; that is +I; look at me. I have my passport! We have our passports all in order +from the proper authorities! We want to pass; and, by God! we will +pass!" + +After half an hour of this altercation, with voices issuing from the +crowd, "Burn the carriages!" "Throw stones at them!" "They are running +away, they are noble and rich; take them to the Hotel de Ville to be +judged!" at last Alfieri's vociferations and gesticulations wearied even +the Paris mob, the crowd became quieter, the National Guards gave the +sign for departure, and Alfieri, jumping into the carriage where Mme. +d'Albany was sitting more dead than alive, shouted to the postillions to +gallop off. + +At a country house near Mons, belonging to the Countess of Albany's +sister, the fugitives received the frightful news of the September +massacres; of those men and women driven, like beasts into an arena, +down the prison-stairs into the prison yard, to fall, hacked to pieces +by the bayonets and sabres and pikes of Maillard's amateur executioners, +on to the blood-soaked mattresses, while the people of Paris, morally +divided on separate benches, the gentlemen here, the ladies there, sat +and looked on; of those men and women many had frequented the salon of +the Rue de Bourgoyne, had chatted and laughed, only a few weeks back, +with Alfieri and the Countess; amongst those men and women Alfieri and +the Countess might themselves easily have been, had the ruffians of the +Barriere Blanche dragged them back to their house, where an order to +arrest Mme. d'Albany arrived two days later, that very 20th August which +had originally been fixed for their departure. The thought of this +narrow escape turned the recollection of that scene at the Barriere +Blanche into a perfect nightmare, which focussed, so to speak, all the +frenzied horror conceived by Alfieri for the French Revolution, for the +"Tiger-Apes" of France. + +By November Alfieri and Mme. d'Albany were in Florence, safe; but +established in a miserable inn, without their furniture, their horses, +their books; all left in Paris; nay, almost without the necessary +clothes, and with very little money. From the dirty inn they migrated +into rather unseemly furnished lodgings, and finally, after some +debating about Siena and inquiring whether a house might not be had +there on the promenade of the Lizza, they settled down in the house, one +of a number formerly belonging to the Gianfigliazzi family, on the Lung +Arno, close to the Ponte Santa Trinita, in Florence. The situation is +one of the most delightful in Florence: across the narrow quay the +windows look almost sheer down into the river, sparkling with a hundred +facets in the spring and summer sunlight, cut by the deep shadows of the +old bridges, to where it is lost to sight between the tall poplars by +the Greve mouth and the ilexes and elms of the Cascine, closed in by +the pale blue peaks of the Carrara Alps; or else, in autumn and winter, +scarcely moving, a mass of dark-greens and browns, wonderfully veined, +like some strange oriental jasper, with transparent violet streakings, +and above which arise, veiled, half washed out by mist, the old +corbelled houses, the church-steeples and roofs, the tiers and tiers of +pine and ilex plumes on the hill opposite. + +For a moment, with the full luminousness of the Tuscan sky once more +in his eyes, and the guttural strength of the Tuscan language once more +in his ears, Alfieri seems to have been delighted. But his cheerfulness +was not of long duration. Ever since his great illness at Colmar, +Alfieri had, I feel persuaded, become virtually an old man; his strength +and spirits were impaired, and the strange morose depression of his +half-fructified youth seemed to return. Coming at that moment, the +disappointment, the terror, the horror of the French Revolution became, +so to speak, part of a moral illness which lasted to his death. Alfieri +was not a tender-hearted nor a humane man; had he been, he would have +felt more sympathy than he did with the beginning of the great movement, +with the strivings after reform which preceded it; he had, on the +contrary, the sort of cold continuous rage, the ruthless self-righteousness +and cut-and-dryness which would have made him, had he been a Frenchman, +a terrorist of the most dreadful type; a regular routinist in extermination +of corrupt people. Hence I cannot believe that, much as he may have been +shocked by the news of the September massacres, of the _grandes +fournees_ which preceded Thermidor, and much as he may have been +distressed by Mme. d'Albany's anxiety and grief for so many friends who +lost their property or life, Alfieri was the man to be driven mad by +the mere thought of bloodshed. But Alfieri had, ever since his earliest +youth, made liberty his goddess, and the worship of liberty his special +religion and mission. That such a religion and mission, to which he had +devoted himself in a time and country when and where no one else dreamed +of anything of the sort, should suddenly become, and without the +smallest agency of his, the religion and mission of the very nation +and people whom he instinctively abhorred from the depths of his soul; +that liberty, which he alone was to teach men to desire, should be the +fashionable craze, mixed up with science, philanthropy, sentiment, and +everything he hated most in the French, this was already a pain that +gnawed silently into Alfieri's soul. But when liberty was, as it were, +dragged out of his own little private temple, where he adored and hymned +it, decked out in patrician dignity of Plutarch and Livy, and carried +about, dressed in the garb of a Paris fish-wife, a red cotton night-cap +on her head, by a tattered, filthy, drunken, blood-stained crew of +_sansculottes_, nay, worse, rolled along on a triumphal car by an +assembly of lawyers and doctors and ex-priests and journalists--when +liberty, which had been to him antique and aristocratic, became modern +and democratic; when the whole of France had turned into a blood-reeking +and streaming temple of this Moloch goddess, then a sort of moral +abscess, long growing unnoticed, seemed to burst within Alfieri's soul, +and a process of slow moral blood-poisoning to begin. + +The Reign of Terror came to an end, the reaction of Thermidor set +in; but this was nothing to Alfieri, for, whereas the unspeakable +profanation of what was his own personal and quasi-private property, +liberty, had hitherto been limited to France, it now spread, a +frightful invading abomination, with the armies of the Directory all +over the world; nay, to Italy itself. + +It was as an expression, an eternal, immortal expression, the severest +conceivable retribution, Alfieri sincerely thought, of this rage, all +the stronger as there entered into it the petty personal vanity as well +as the noble abstract feeling of the man--it was as an expression of +this gallophobia that Alfieri composed his famous but little-read +_Misogallo_. This collection of prose arguments and vituperations and +versified epigrams, all larded and loaded with quotations from all the +Latin and Greek authors whom Alfieri was busy spelling out, does +certainly contain many things which, old as they are, strike even us +with the force of living contempt and indignation. Nay, even including +its most stupid and dullest violent parts, we can sympathise with its +bitterness and violence, when we think of the frightful deeds of blood +which, talking heroically of justice and liberty, France had been +committing; of the miserable series of petty rapines and extortions +which, talking patronisingly of the Greeks and Romans, the French nation +was practising upon the Italians whom it had come to liberate. That such +feeling should be elicited was natural enough. But we feel, as we turn +over the pages of the _Misogallo_, and collate with its epigrams a +certain passage in Alfieri's memoirs and letters, that when we meet +it in this particular man, in this hard, savage, narrow, pedantic +doctrinaire, whose very magnanimity is vanity and egotism, we can no +longer sympathise with the hatred of the French, which in juster and +more modest men, as for instance Carlo Botta, invariably elicits our +sympathy. Much as we dislike the republican French who descended into +Italy, the _Misogallo_ makes us like Alfieri even less. Whether this +revolution, despite the oceans of blood which it shed, might not be +bringing a great and lasting benefit to mankind by sweeping away the +hundred and one obstacles which impeded social progress; whether this +French invasion, despite the money which it extorted, the statues and +pictures which it stole, the miserable high-flown lies which it told, +might not be doing Italy a great service in accustoming it to modern +institutions, in training it to warfare, in ridding it of a brood of +inept little tyrants: such questions did not occur to Alfieri, for whom +liberty meant everything, progress and improvement nothing. As the +century drew to a close, and the futility of so many vaunted reforms, +the hollowness of so many promises, became apparent to the Italians with +the shameful treaty which gave Venice, liberated of her oligarchy, to +Austria, all the nobler men of the day, Pindemonti, Botta, Foscolo, and +the crowds of nameless patriotic youths who filled the universities, +were seized by a terrible soul-sickness; everything seemed to have given +way, each course was as bad as the other, and Italy seemed destined to +servitude and indignity, whether under her new masters the French, or +under her old masters the Austrians and Bourbons and priests. But the +feelings of Alfieri were not of this kind; he was not torn by +patriotism; he was simply pushed into sympathy with the tyrannies which +he had so hated by the intolerable pain of finding that the liberty +which he had preached was being propagandised by the nation and the +class of society which he detested most. + +Such Alfieri appears to me, and such I think he must appear to everyone +who conscientiously studies the extraordinary manner in which this +apostle of liberty came to preach in favour of despotism. But in his own +eyes, and in the eyes of the Countess of Albany, Alfieri doubtless found +abundant arguments to prove himself perfectly logical and magnanimous. +This French Revolution was merely a revolt of slaves; and what tyranny +could be more odious than the tyranny of those whom nature had fitted +only for slavery? What are the French? "The French," answers one of the +epigrams of the _Misogallo_, "have always been puppets; formerly puppets +in powder, now stinking and blood-stained puppets." "We indeed are +slaves," says another epigram, "but at least indignant slaves" (a +statement which the whole history of Italy in the nineties goes to +disprove); "not, as you Gauls always have been and always will be, +slaves applauding power whatever it be." The nasal and guttural +pronunciation of the French language, the bare existence of such a word +as _quatrain_, is enough to prove to Alfieri that the French can never +know true liberty. Alfieri, who had looked the _ancien regime_ more than +once in the face, actually persuaded himself that, as he writes, "the +frightful French mob robbed and slaughtered the upper classes because +those upper classes had always treated it too kindly." Alfieri actually +got to believe these things. He would, had power been put in his hands, +have headed a counter revolution and exterminated as many people again +as the republicans had exterminated. Power not being in his hands, he +hastened to do what seemed to him a vital matter to all Europe, a sort +of fatal thrust to France; he solemnly recanted all his former writings +in favour of revolutions and republics. He, who had witnessed the taking +of the Bastille and sung it in an ode, deliberately wrote as follows: +"The famous day of the 14th July 1789 crowned the victorious iniquity +(of the people). Not understanding at that time the nature of these +slaves, I dishonoured my pen by writing an ode on the taking of the +Bastille." Surely, if we admit that to see liberty degraded by its +association with revolutionary horrors must have been unbearably bitter +to the nobler portion of Alfieri's nature, we must admit that to see +Alfieri himself, Alfieri so proud of his former ferocious love of +liberty, turned into a mere ranting renegade, is an unendurable +spectacle also; we should like to wash our hands of him as he tried to +wash his hands of the Revolution. + +All this political atrabiliousness did not improve Alfieri's temper; +and could not have made it easier or more agreeable to live with him. +The Countess of Albany naturally disliked the Revolution and the +French, after all the grief and inconvenience which she owed them; she +naturally, also, disliked everything that Alfieri disliked. Still, I +cannot help fancying that this woman, far more intellectual than +passionate, and growing more indifferent, more easy-going, more +half-optimistically, half-cynically charitable towards the world with +every year that saw her grow fat, and plain, and dowdy,--I cannot help +fancying that the Countess of Albany must have got to listen to +Alfieri's misogallic furies much as she might have listened to his +groans had he been afflicted with gout or the toothache, sympathising +with the pain, but just a little weary of its expression. She must +also, at times, have compared the little company of select provincial +notabilities, illustrious people never known beyond their town and their +lifetime, which she collected about herself and Alfieri in the house by +the Arno, with the brilliant society which had assembled in her hotel +in Paris. To her, who was, after all, not Italian, but French by +education and temper, and who had been steeped anew in French ideas and +habits, this small fry of Italian literature, professional and pedantic, +able to discuss and (alas! but too able) to hold forth, but absolutely +unable to talk, to _causer_ in the French sense, must have become rather +oppressive. She and Alfieri were both growing elderly, and the hearth by +which they were seated, alone, childless, with nothing but the ghost of +their former passion, the ghost of their former ideal, to keep them +company, was on the whole very bleak and cheerless. Alfieri, working off +his over-excitement in a system of tremendous self-education, sitting +for the greater part of the day poring over Latin and Greek and Hebrew +grammars, and exercises and annotated editions, till he was so exhausted +that he could scarcely digest his dinner; the Countess killing the +endless days reading new books of philosophy, of poetry, of fiction, +anything and everything that came to hand, writing piles and piles of +letters to every person of her acquaintance; this double existence of +bored and overworked dreariness, was this the equivalent of marriage? +was this the realisation of ideal love? + +But there were things to confirm Mme. d'Albany in that easy-going +indifferentism which replaced passion and suffering in this fat, kindly, +intellectual woman of forty; things which, as they might have made other +women weep, probably made this woman do what in its way was just as +sad--smile. + +Alfieri had always had what, to us, may seem very strange notions on the +subject of love, but which were not strange when we consider the times +and nation in general, and the man in particular. After the various +love manias which preceded his meeting with Mme. d'Albany, he had +determined, as he tells us, to save his peace of mind and dignity by +refusing to fall in love with women of respectable position. The +Countess of Albany, by enchaining him in the bonds of what he called +"worthy love," had saved him from any chance of fresh follies with these +alarming "virtuous women." But follies with women of less respectable +position and less obvious virtue appear to have presented no fear of +degradation to Alfieri's mind. And now, late on in the nineties, when +Mme. d'Albany was rapidly growing plain and stout and elderly, and he +was getting into the systematic habit of regarding her less in her +reality than in the ideal image which he had arranged in his mind; now, +when he was writing the autobiography where the Countess figured as +his Beatrice, and when he was composing the Latin epitaphs which were +to unite his tomb with that of the woman "a Victorio Alferio, ultra +resomnia dilecta," just at this time Alfieri appears to have returned to +those flirtations with women neither respectable nor virtuous which +seemed to him so morally safe to indulge in. A very strange note, +preserved at Siena, to a "Nina padrona mia dilettissima," shows that the +memory of Gori and the friendship of Gori's friends were not the only +things which attracted him ever and anon from Florence to Siena. A +collection of wretched bouts-rimes and burlesque doggrel, written at +Florence in a house which Mme. d'Albany could not enter, and in the +company of women whom Mme. d'Albany could not receive, and among which +is a sonnet in which Alfieri explains his condescension in joining in +these poetical exercises of the demi-monde by an allusion to Hercules +and Omphale, shows that Alfieri frequented in Florence other society +besides that which crowded round his lady in Casa Gianfigliazzi. + +Mme. d'Albany was far too shrewd and far too worldly not to see all +this; and Alfieri was far too open and cynical to attempt to hide +it. Mme. d'Albany, having her praises and his love read to her in +innumerable sonnets, in the autobiography and in the epitaphs, probably +merely smiled; she was a woman of the eighteenth century, a foreigner, +an easy-going woman, and had learned to consider such escapades as these +as an inevitable part of matrimony or quasi-matrimony. But, for all her +worldly philosophy, did she never feel a vague craving, a void, as she +sat in that big empty house reading her books while Alfieri was studying +his Greek, a vague desire to have what consoles other women for coldness +or infidelity, a son or a daughter, a normal object of devotion, something +besides Alfieri, and which she could love whether deserving or not; +something besides Alfieri's glory, in which she could take an interest +whether other people did or did not agree? Such a connection as hers +with Alfieri may have had an attraction of romance, of poetry, connected +with its very illegitimacy, its very negation of normal domestic life, +as long as both she and Alfieri were young and passionately in love; but +where was the romance, the poetry now, and where was the humdrum married +woman's happiness, at whose expense that romance, that poetry, had been +bought? + +Mme. d'Albany, if I may judge by the enormous piles of her letters which +I have myself seen, and by the report of my friend Signor Mario Pratesi, +who has examined another huge collection for my benefit, was getting to +make herself a sort of half-vegetating intellectual life, reading so +many hours a day, writing letters so many more hours; taking the quite +unenthusiastic, business-like interest in literature and politics of a +woman whose life is very empty, and, it seems to me, from the tone of +her letters, growing daily more indifferent to life, more desultory, +more cynical, more misanthropic and tittle-tattling. And Alfieri, +meanwhile, was growing more unsociable, more misanthropic, more violent +in temper, hanging a printed card stating that he wished no visits (one +such is preserved in the library at Florence) in the hall, pursuing and +flogging street-boys because they splashed his stockings by playing in +the puddles; insulting Ginguene and General Miollis when they attempted +to be civil; groaning over the victories of the French, rejoicing over +the brutal massacres by the priest-hounded Tuscan populace; going to +Florence (when they were spending the summer in a villa) for the +pleasure of seeing the Austrian troops enter, and of witnessing (as Gino +Capponi records) the French prisoners or Frenchly-inclined Florentines +being pilloried and tortured by the anti-revolutionary mob. Besides such +demonstrations of an unamiable disposition as these, working with the +fury of an alchemist, and, perhaps, taking a holiday at that house where +the doggrel verses were written. The Countess of Albany, who had been so +horribly unhappy with her legitimate husband, must have been rather +dreary of soul with her world-authorised lover. + +It was at this moment, as she sat, an idle, desultory, neither happy nor +unhappy woman, rapidly growing old, watching the century draw to a close +amid chaos and misery,--it was at this moment that an eccentric English +prelate, Lord Bristol, Bishop of Derry, introduced at the house on the +Lung Arno a friend of his, a French painter, a former pupil of David, +and who had won the _Prix de Rome_, by name Francois Xavier Fabre. M. +Fabre was French, but he was a royalist; he hated the Revolution; he had +settled in Italy; and, in consideration of this, he was tolerated by +Alfieri. To Mme. d'Albany, on the other hand, the fact of Fabre being +French must secretly have been a great recommendation. French in +language, habits, mode of thought, French in heart, cut off, as it +seemed, for ever from Paris and Parisian society, cooped up among this +pedantic small fry of Florentines, listening all day to Alfieri's +tirades against the French nation, the French reforms, the French +philosophy, the French language, the French everything, the poor woman +must have heartily enjoyed an hour's chat in good French with a real +Frenchman, a Frenchman who, for all Alfieri might say, was really +French; she must have enjoyed talking about his work, his pictures, +about everything and anything that was not Alfieri's Greek, or Alfieri's +Hebrew, or Alfieri's tragedies, or comedies or satires. Alfieri was a +great genius and a great man; and she loved, or imagined she loved, +Alfieri like her very soul. But still--still, it was somehow a relief +when young Fabre, with his regular south-of-France face, his rather +mocking and cynical French expression, his easy French talk, came to +give her a painting lesson while Alfieri was pacing up and down +translating Homer and Pindar with the help of a lexicon. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +CASA GIANFIGLIAZZI. + + +Thus things jogged on. Occasionally a grand performance of one of +Alfieri's plays enlivened the house on the Lung Arno. A room was filled +with chairs, arranged with curtains, and a select company invited to see +the poet (for by this respectful title he appears always to have been +mentioned) play Saul or Creon, to his own admiration, but apparently +less so to that of his guests. Occasionally, also, Alfieri and Mme. +d'Albany would go for a few days to Siena to enjoy the conversation of a +little knot of friends of their dead friend Gori; a certain Cavaliere +Bianchi, a certain Canon Ansano Luti, a certain Alessandro Cerretani, +and one or two others, who met in the house of a charming and +intellectual woman, Teresa Regoli, daughter of a Sienese shopkeeper, +married to another shopkeeper, called Mocenni, and who was one of Mme. +d'Albany's most intimate friends. Occasionally, also, some of these +would come for a jaunt to Florence, when Alfieri and the Countess moved +heaven and earth (recollecting their own aversion to husbands) that the +_Grumbler_, as Signor Mocenni was familiarly called, should be left +behind, and _la chere_ Therese come accompanied (in characteristic +Italian eighteenth-century fashion) only by her children and by her +_cavaliere servente_, Mario Bianchi. These were the small excitements in +this curious double life of more than married routine. Alfieri, who, as +he was getting old and weak in health, was growing only the more +furiously active and rigidly disciplinarian, had determined to learn +Greek, to read all the great Greek authors; and worked away with +terrific ardour at this school-boy work, crowning his efforts with a +self-constituted Order of Homer, of which he himself was the sole +founder and sole member. He was, also, having finally despatched the +sacramental number of tragedies, working at an equally sacramental +number of satires and comedies, absolutely unconscious of his complete +deficiency in both these styles, and persuaded that he owed it to his +nation to set them on the right road in comedy and satire, as he had set +them on the right road in tragedy. + +A ridiculous man! Not so. I have spoken many hard words against Alfieri; +and I repeat that he seems to me to have often fallen short, betrayed by +his century, his vanity, his narrowness and hardness of temper, even of +the ideal which he had set up for himself. But I would not have it +supposed that I do not see the greatness of that ideal, and the nobleness +of the reality out of which it arose. That Alfieri, a strange mixture of +the passionate man of spontaneous action, and of the self-manipulating, +idealising _poseur_, should have fallen short of his own ideals, is +perhaps the one pathetic circumstance of his life; the one dash of +suffering and failure which makes this heroic man a hero. Alfieri did +not probably suspect wherein he fell short of his own ideal; he did +not, could not see that his faults were narrowness of nature, and +incompleteness, meanness of conception, for, if he had, he would have +ceased to be narrow and ceased to be mean. But Alfieri knew that there +was something very wrong about himself, he felt a deficiency, a jar in +his own soul; he felt, as he describes in the famous sonnet at the back +of Fabre's portrait of him, that he did not know whether he was noble or +base, whether he was Achilles or Thersites. + +"_Uom, sei tu grande o vile? Mori, il saprai._" ("Man, art thou noble +or base? Die, and thou shalt know it.") Thus wrote Alfieri, making, as +usual, fame the arbiter of his worth; and showing, even in the moment of +seeking for truth about himself, how utterly and hopelessly impossible +it was for him to feel it. Mean and great; both, I think, at once. But +of the meanness, the narrowness of nature, the want of resonance of +fibre, the insufficiency of moral vitality in so many things; of +Alfieri's vanity, intolerance, injustice, indifference, hardness; of all +these peculiarities which make the real man repulsive, the ideal man +unattractive, to us, I have said more than enough, and when we have +said all this, Alfieri still remains, for all his vanity, selfishness, +meanness, narrow-mindedness, a man of grander proportions, of finer +materials, nay, even of nobler moral shape, than the vast majority of +men superior to him in all these points. Let us look at him in those +last decaying years, at those studies which have seemed to us absurd: +self-important, pedantic, almost monomaniac; or brooding over those +feelings which were, doubtless, selfish, morbid; let us look at him, +for, despite all his faults, he is fine. Fine in indomitable energy, in +irrepressible passion. Alfieri was fifty; he was tormented by gout; his +health was rapidly sinking; but the sense of weakness only made him more +resolute to finish the work which (however mistakenly) he thought it his +duty to leave completed; more determined that, having lived for so many +years a dunce, he would go down to the grave cleansed of the stain of +ignorance, having read and appreciated as much of the great writers of +antiquity as any man who had had a well-trained youth, a studious +manhood. Soon after his great illness (which, I believe, changed him so +much for the worse by hastening premature old age) at Colmar, he had +written to his friends at Siena that he had very nearly been made a fool +of by Death; but that, having escaped, he intended, by hurrying his +work, to make a fool of Death instead. And in 1801 he wrote in his +memorandum-book: "Health giving way year by year; whence, hurrying to +finish my six comedies, I make it decidedly worse." + +Soon after, as Mme. d'Albany later informed his friend Caluso, Alfieri, +finding that his digestion had become so bad as to produce inability to +work after meals, began systematically to diminish his already extremely +sober allowance of food; while, at the same time, he did not diminish +the exercise, walking, riding, and driving, which he found necessary to +keep himself in spirits. Knowing that death could not be far ahead, and +accustomed since his youth to think that his life ought not to extend +over sixty years, Alfieri was calmly and deliberately walking to meet +Death. + +Calmly and deliberately; but not heartlessly. Engrossed in his studies, +devoted to his own glory as he was, he was still full of a kind of +mental passion for Mme. d'Albany. He was unfaithful to her for the +sake of low women, he was neglectful of her for the sake of his work; he +did not, perhaps, receive much pleasure from this stout, plain, prosaic +lady (like one of Rubens's women grown old, as Lamartine later described +her) whom he left to her letter-writing, her reading of Kant, of La +Harpe, of Shakespeare, of Lessing; to her painting lessons, and long +discussions on art with Monsieur Fabre. The woman whose presence, no +longer exciting, was doubtless a matter of indifference to him. But, +nevertheless, it seems to me probable that Alfieri never wrote more +completely from his heart than when, composing the epitaph of the +Countess, he said of Mme. d'Albany that she had been loved by him more +than anything on earth, and held almost as a mortal divinity. "A +Victorio Alferio ... ultra res omnes dilecta, et quasi mortale numen +ab ipso constanter habita et observata." For a thought begins about +the year 1796 to recur throughout Alfieri's letters and sonnets, and +whenever he mentions the Countess in his autobiography; a thought too +terrible not to be genuine: he or his beloved must die first; one or the +other must have the horror of remaining alone, widowed of all interest +on earth. How constantly this idea haunted him, and with what painful +vividness, is apparent from a letter which I shall translate almost _in +extenso_; as, together with those few words which I have quoted about +Gori's death, it shows the passionate tenderness that was hidden, like +some aromatic herb beneath the Alpine snow, under the harsh exterior of +Alfieri. + +The letter is to Mme. Teresa Mocenni at Siena, and relates to the death +of Mario Bianchi, who had long been her devoted _cavaliere servente_. +"Your letter," writes Alfieri, "breaks my heart. I feel the complete +horror of a situation which it gives me the shivers merely to think may +be my situation one day or other; and oh! how much worse would it not be +for me, living alone, isolated from everyone, closed up in myself. O +God! I hope I may not be the survivor, and yet how can I wish that my +better self (_la parte migliore di me stesso_) should endure a situation +which I myself could never have the courage to endure? These are frightful +things. I think about them very often, and sometimes I write some bad +rhymes about them to ease my mind; but I never can get accustomed either +to the thought of remaining alone, nor to that of leaving my lady." +"Some opinions," he goes on--and this hankering after Christianity on +the part of a man who had lived in eighteenth-century disbelief seems +to bear out what Mme. d'Albany told the late Gino Capponi, that had +Alfieri lived much longer he would have died telling his rosary,--"some +opinions are more useful and give more satisfaction than others to a +well-constituted heart. Thus, it does our affection much more good to +believe that our Mario (Bianchi) is united to Candido (another dead +friend) and to Gori, that they are talking and thinking about us, and +that we shall meet them all some day, than to believe that they are all +of them reduced to a handful of ashes. If such a belief as the first is +repugnant to physics and to mathematical evidence, it is not, therefore, +to be despised. The principal advantage and honour of mankind is that it +can feel, and science teaches us how not to feel. Long live, therefore, +ignorance and poetry, and let us accept the imaginary as the true. Man +subsists upon love; love makes him a god: for I call _God_ an intensely +felt love, and I call dogs, or French, which comes to the same, the +frozen philosophisers who are moved only by the fact that two and two +make four." + +Alfieri's secret desire that he might not survive his beloved was +fulfilled sooner, perhaps, than he expected. The eccentric figure, the +tall, gaunt man, thin and pale as a ghost, with flying red hair and +flying scarlet cloak, driving the well-known phaeton, or sauntering +moodily along the Lung Arno and through the Boboli gardens, was soon to +be seen no more. As the year 1803 wore on he felt himself hard pressed +by the gout; he ate less and less, he took an enormous amount of +foot exercise; he worked madly at his memoirs, his comedies, his +translations, he felt almost constantly fatigued and depressed. On the +3rd October 1803, after his usual morning's work, he went out for a +drive in his phaeton; but a strange and excessive cold, despite the +still summer weather, forced him to alight and to try and warm himself +by walking. Walking brought on violent internal pains, and he returned +home with the fever on him. The next day he rose and dressed, but he was +unable to eat or work, and fell into a long drowse; the next day after +that he again tried to take a walk, but returned with frightful pains. +He refused to go to bed except at night, and tore off the mustard +plaisters which the doctors had placed on his feet, lest the blisters +should prevent his walking; dying, he would still not be a sick man. The +night of the 8th he was unable to sleep, and talked a great deal to the +Countess, seated by his bedside, about his work, and repeated part of +Hesiod in Greek to her. Accustomed for months to the idea of death, he +does not seem to have guessed that it was near at hand. But the news +that he was dying spread through Florence. A Piedmontese lady--strangely +enough a niece of that Marchesa de Prie opposite to whose windows +Alfieri had renewed the device of Ulysses and the sirens by being tied +to a chair--hastened to a learned and eccentric priest, a Padre Canovai, +entreating him to run and offer the dying poet the consolations of +religion. Canovai, knowing that both Alfieri and Mme. d'Albany were +unbelievers, stoutly refused; but later on, seized with remorse, he +hurried to the house on the Lung Arno. Admitted into the sick room, he +came just in time to see Alfieri, who had got up during a momentary +absence of Mme. d'Albany, rise from his arm-chair, lean against his +bed, and, without agony or effort, unconscious "like a bird," says the +Countess, give up the ghost. It was between nine and ten of the morning +of the 9th October 1803. Vittorio Alfieri was in his fifty-fifth year. + +The Abate di Caluso, the greatest friend he had, after Gori, was +summoned from Turin to console the Countess and put all papers in order. +Alfieri's will, made out in 1799, left all his books and MSS., and +whatever small property he possessed, to the Countess Louise d'Albany, +leaving her to dispose of them entirely according to her good pleasure. +Among these papers was found a short letter, undated, addressed "To the +friend I have left behind, Tommaso di Caluso, at Turin," and which ran +as follows:-- + +"As I may any day give way beneath the very serious malady which is +consuming me, I have thought it wise to prepare these few lines in order +that they may be given to you as a proof that you have always, to my +last moment, been present to my mind and very dear to my heart. The +person whom above everything in the world I have most respected and +loved, may some day tell you all the circumstances of my illness. I +supplicate and conjure you to do your best to see and console her, and +to concert with her the various measures which I have begged her to +carry out with regard to my writings. + +"I will not give you more pain, at present, by saying any more. I have +known in you one of the most rare men in every respect. I die loving and +esteeming you, and valuing myself for your friendship if I have deserved +it. Farewell, farewell." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +FABRE. + + +"Happiness has disappeared out of the world for me," wrote Mme. d'Albany, +in January 1804, to her old friend Canon Luti, at Siena. "I take +interest in nothing; the world might be completely upset without my +noticing it. I read a little, and reading is the only thing which gives +me any courage, a merely artificial courage; for when I return to my +own thoughts and think of all that I have lost, I burst into tears and +call Death to my assistance, but Death will not come. O God! what a +misfortune to lose a person whom one adores and venerates at the same +time. I think that if I still had Therese (Mme. Mocenni) it would +be some consolation; but there is no consolation for me. I have the +strength to hide my feelings before the world, for no one could conceive +my misfortune who has not felt it. A twenty-six years' friendship with +so perfect a being, and then to see him taken away from me at the very +age when I required him most." + +Alfieri a perfect being--a being adored and venerated by Mme. d'Albany! +One cannot help, in reading these words, smiling sadly at the strange +magic by which Death metamorphoses those whom he has taken in the eyes +of the survivors; at the strange potions by means of which he makes love +spring up in the hearts where it has ceased to exist, saving us from +hypocrisy by making us really feel what is false to our nature, +enabling us to lie to ourselves instead of lying to others. The Countess +of Albany's grief was certainly most sincere; long after all direct +references to Alfieri have ceased in her correspondence (I am speaking +principally of that with her intimates at Siena), there reigns +throughout her letters a depression, an indifference to everything, +which shows that the world had indeed become empty in her eyes. But +though the grief was sincere, I greatly question whether the love was +so. Alfieri had become, in his later years, the incarnation of dreary +violence; he could not have been much to anyone's feelings; and Mme. +d'Albany's engrossment in her readings, in political news and town +gossip, even with her most intimate correspondents, shows that Alfieri +played but a very small part in her colourless life. So small a part, +that one may say, without fear of injustice, that Mme. d'Albany had +pretty well ceased to love him at all; for had she loved him, would she +have been as indifferent, as serene as she appears in all her letters, +while the man she loved was killing himself as certainly as if he were +taking daily doses of a slow poison? Love is vigilant, love is full of +fears, and Mme. d'Albany was so little vigilant, so little troubled by +fears, that when this visibly dying man, this man who had prepared his +epitaph, who had settled all his literary affairs, who had written the +farewell letter to his friend, actually died, she would seem to have +been thunder-stricken not merely by grief, but by amazement. + +The Countess of Albany was not a selfish woman; she had, apparently +without complaining, sacrificed her social tastes, made herself an old +woman before her time, in acquiescence to Alfieri's misanthropic and +routinist self-engrossment; she had been satisfied, or thought herself +satisfied, with the cold, ceremonious adoration of a man who divided his +time between his studies, his horses, and his intrigues with other +women; but unselfish natures are often unselfish from their very +thinness and coldness. Alfieri, heaven knows, had been selfish and +self-engrossed; but, perhaps because he was selfish and self-engrossed, +because he was always listening to his own ideas, and nursing his own +feelings, Alfieri had been passionate and loving; and, as we have seen, +while he seemed growing daily more fossilised, while he was at once +engrossed with his own schemes of literary glory, and indifferently +amusing himself by infidelities to his lady, he was then, even then, +constantly haunted by the thought that, unless he himself were left +behind in the terrors of widowhood, the Countess of Albany would have to +suffer those pangs which he felt that he himself could never endure. + +Alfieri saw the Countess through the medium of his own character, and he +proved mistaken. Perhaps the most terrible ironical retribution which +could have fallen upon his strange egomania, would have been, had such a +thing been possible, the revelation of how gratuitous had been that +terrible vision of Mme. d'Albany's life after his death; the revelation +of how little difference, after the first great grief, his loss had made +in her life; the revelation that, unnoticed, unconsciously, a successor +had been prepared for him. + +In a very melancholy letter, dated May 31, 1804, in which Mme. d'Albany +expatiates to her friend Canon Luti upon the uselessness of her life, +and her desire to end it, I find this unobtrusive little sentence: +"Fabre desires his compliments to you. He has been a great resource to +me in everything." + +This sentence, I think, explains what to the enemies of Mme. d'Albany +has been a delightful scandal, and to her admirers a melancholy mystery; +explains, reduces to mere very simple, conceivable, neither commendable +nor shameful every-day prose, the fact that little by little the place +left vacant by Alfieri was filled by another man. Italian writers, +inheriting from Giordani, even from Foscolo, a certain animosity against +a woman who, as soon as Alfieri was dead, became once more what nature +had made her, half French, with a great preference for French and French +things--Italian writers, I say, have tried to turn the Fabre episode +into something extremely disgraceful to Mme. d'Albany. Massimo d'Azeglio, +partly out of hatred to the Countess, who was rather severe and +acrimonious upon his youthful free-and-easiness, partly out of a desire +to amuse his readers, has introduced into his autobiography an anecdote +told him by Mme. de Prie (the niece of Alfieri's famous Turin mistress, +and the lady who took it upon herself to send him a priest without +consulting the Countess), to the effect that she had watched Fabre +making eyes, kissing his fingers, and generally exchanging signals with +Mme. d'Albany at a party where Alfieri was present. Let those who are +amused by this piece of gossip believe it implicitly; it does not appear +to me either amusing, or credible, or creditable to the man who retailed +it. The Florentine society of the early years of this century was, if we +may trust the keen observation of Stendhal, almost as naively and +openly profligate as that of a South Sea Island village; and such a +society, which could talk of the things and in the way which it did, +which could permit certain poetical compositions (found highly +characteristic by Stendhal) to be publicly performed before the ladies +and gentlemen celebrated therein, such a society naturally enjoyed and +believed a story like that retailed by d'Azeglio. But surely we may put +it behind us, we who are not Florentines of the year 1800, and who can +actually conceive that a woman who had exchanged irreproachable +submission to a drunken husband, for legally unsanctioned, but open and +faithful attachment for a man like Alfieri, might at the age of fifty +take a liking to a man of thirty-five without that liking requiring a +disgusting explanation. The clean explanation seems so much simpler and +more consonant. Fabre had become an intimate of the house during +Alfieri's last years. He was French, he was a painter; two high +recommendations to Mme. d'Albany. He was, if we may trust Paul Louis +Courier, who made him the hero of a famous imaginary dialogue, clever +with a peculiarly French sort of cleverness; he gave the Countess +lessons in painting while Alfieri was poring over his work. The sudden +death of Alfieri would bring Fabre into still closer relations with Mme. +d'Albany, as a friend of the deceased, the brother of his physician, and +the virtual fellow-countryman of the Countess; he would naturally be +called upon to help in a hundred and one melancholy arrangements: he +received visitors, answered letters, gave orders; he probably laid +Alfieri in his coffin. When all the bustle incident upon death had +subsided, Fabre would remain Mme. d'Albany's most constant visitor. He, +who had seen Alfieri at the very last, might be admitted when the door +was closed to all others; he could help to sort the dead man's papers; +he could, in his artistic capacity, discuss the plans for Alfieri's +monument, write to Canova, correspond with the dignitaries of Santa +Croce, and so forth; come in contact with the Countess in those manifold +pieces of business, in those long conversations, which seem, for a time, +to keep the dead one still in the company of the living. There is +nothing difficult to understand or shameful to relate in all this; and +the friends of the Countess, delicate-minded women like Mme. de Souza, +puritanic-minded men like Sismondi, misanthropic or scoffing people like +Foscolo or Paul Louis Courier, found nothing at which to take umbrage, +nothing to rage or laugh at, in this long intimacy between a woman over +fifty and a man many years her junior; a man who lived at the other end +of Florence, who (if I may trust traditions yet alive) was supposed to +be attached to a woman well known to Mme. d'Albany; nor have we, I +think, any right to be less charitable than they. + +Louise d'Albany, careless, like most women of her day, of social +institutions, and particularly hostile to marriage, was certainly not an +impure woman; her whole life goes to prove this. But Louise d'Albany was +an indifferent woman, and the extinction of all youthful passion and +enthusiasm, the friction of a cynical world, made her daily more +indifferent. She had been faithful to Alfieri, devotedly enduring one of +the most unendurable of companions, loving and admiring him while he was +still alive. But once the pressure of that strong personality removed, +the image of Alfieri appears to have been obliterated little by little +from the soft wax of her character. She continued, nay instituted, +a sort of cultus of Alfieri; became, as his beloved, the priestess +presiding over what had once been his house, and was now his temple. The +house on the Lung Arno remained the Casa Alfieri; the rooms which he +had inhabited were kept carefully untouched; his books and papers were +elaborated and preserved as he had left them; his portraits were +everywhere, and visitors, like Foscolo, Courier, Sismondi, and the young +Lamartine, were expected to inquire respectfully into the legend of the +divinity, to ask to see his relics, as the visitors of a shrine might be +expected to enquire into the legend, to ask to see the relics, of some +great saint. Mme. d'Albany conscientiously devoted a portion of her time +to seeing that Alfieri's works were properly published, and that +Alfieri's tomb in Santa Croce was properly executed. She was, as I have +said, the priestess, the divinely selected priestess, of the divinity. But +at the same time Mme. d'Albany gradually settled down quite comfortably +and happily without Alfieri. After the first great grief was over a +sense of relief may have arisen, a sense that after all "'tis an ill +wind that blows no good"; that if she had lost Alfieri she had gained a +degree of liberty, of independence, that she had acquired a possibility +of being herself with all her tastes, the very existence of which she +had forgotten while living under the shadow of that strange and +disagreeable great man. A negative sense of compensation, of pleasure +in the foreign society to which she could now devote herself; of +satisfaction in the miniature copy of her former Parisian salon which +she could arrange in her Florentine house; of comfort in a gently +bustling, unconcerned, cheerful old age; negative feelings which, +perhaps as a result of their very repression, seem little by little to +have turned to a positive feeling, a positive aversion for the past +which she refused to regret, a positive dislike to the memory of the +man whom she could no longer love. Horrible things to say; yet, I +fear, true. A man such as Alfieri had permitted himself to become, +admirable in many respects, but intolerant, hard, arrogant, selfish, +self-engrossed, cannot really be loved; he may be endured as a result of +long habit, he may inflict his personality without effort upon another; +but in order that this be the case that other must be singularly +apathetic, indifferent, malleable; and apathetic, indifferent, and +malleable people, those who never resist the living individual, rarely +remember the dead one. "She was," writes one of the most conscientious +and respectful of men, the late Gino Capponi, "heavy in feature and +form, and, if I may say so, her mind, like her body, was thick-set.... +Since several years she had ceased to love Alfieri." + +We cannot be indignant with her; she had never pretended to be what she +was not. A highly intellectual, literary mind, a pure temperament, a +passive, rather characterless character, taking the impress of its +surroundings; passionate when Alfieri was passionate, depressed when +Alfieri was depressed; cheerful when Alfieri's successors, Fabre and +mankind and womankind in general, were cheerful. To be angry with such a +woman would be ridiculous; but, little as we may feel attached to the +memory of Alfieri, we cannot help saying to ourselves, "Thank Heaven he +never understood what she was; thank Heaven he never foresaw what she +would be!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +SALON OF THE COUNTESS. + + +A shadowy being, nay, a shadow cast in the unmistakable shape of +another, so long as Alfieri was alive, the Countess of Albany seems to +gain consistency and form, to become a substantive person, only after +Alfieri's death. This woman, whom, in the last ten years, we have seen +consorting almost exclusively with Italians, and spending the greater +proportion of her days in solitary reading of Condillac, Lock, Kant, +Mme. de Genlis, Lessing, Milton, everything and anything; whose letters, +exclusively (as far as I know them) to Italians of the middle classes, +are full of fury against everything that is French; this woman, who has +hitherto been a feeble replica of Alfieri, suddenly turns into an +extremely sociable, chatty woman of the world, and a woman of the world +who is, to all intents and purposes, French. + +To be the rallying point of a very cosmopolitan, literary, but by no +means unworldly society, seems suddenly to have become Mme. d'Albany's +mission; and reading the letters copied from the Montpellier Archives, +and published by M. Saint Rene Taillandier, one wonders how this friend +of Mme. de Stael, of Sismondi, of Mme. de Souza, this hostess of Moore, +of Lamartine, of Lady Morgan, of every sort of French, English, German, +Russian, or polyglot creature of distinction that travelled through +Italy in the early part of this century, could ever have been the +beloved of Alfieri, the misanthropic correspondent of a lot of Sienese +professors, priests, and shop-keepers. + +The fact was that Mme. d'Albany could now become, so to speak, what she +really was; or, at least, show herself to be such. Worldly wise and a +trifle cynical she had always been; in the midst of the pages of literary +review and political newspaper constituting her letters to Mme. Mocenni, +Canon Luti and Alessandro Cerretani of Siena, there is a good deal of +mere personal gossip, stories of married women's lovers, married men's +mistresses, domestic bickerings, &c., interspersed with very plain-spoken +and (according to our ideas) slightly demoralised moralisings. It is +evident that this was not a woman to shrink from the reality of things, +to take the world in disgust, to expect too much of her acquaintances. +On the other hand these letters of the Alfieri period show Mme. d'Albany +to have been decidedly a good-natured and friendly woman. She has the +gift of getting people to trust her with their little annoyances and +grievances; she is constantly administering sympathy to Mme. Mocenni +for the tiresomeness and stupidity and harshness of her husband; she +keeps up a long correspondence, recommending books, correcting French +exercises, exhorting to study and to virtue (particularly to abstinence +from gambling), encouraging, helping Mme. Mocenni's boy Vittorio. She is +clearly a woman who enjoys hearing about other folk's concerns, enjoys +taking an interest in them, sympathising and, if possible, assisting +them. + +These two qualities, a dose of cynical worldliness, sufficient to +prevent all squeamishness and that coldness and harshness which springs +from expecting people to be better than they are, and a dose of +kindliness, helpfulness, pleasure in knowing the affairs and feelings +and troubles of others; these two qualities are, I should think, the +essentials for a woman who would keep a salon in the old sense of the +word, who would be the centre of a large but decidedly select society, +the friend and correspondent of many and various people possessed of +more genius or more character than herself. Such a woman, thanks to her +easy-going knowledge of the world, and to her cordial curiosity and +helpfulness, is the friend of the most hostile people; and she is so +completely satisfied with, and interested in, the particular person with +whom she is talking or to whom she is writing, that that particular +person really believes himself or herself to be her chief friend, and +overlooks the scores of other chief friends, viewed with exactly the +same degree of interest, and treated with the same degree of cordiality +all round. The world is apt to like such women, as such women like it, +and to say of them that there must be an immense richness of character, +an extraordinary power of bringing out the best qualities of every +individual, in a woman who can drive such complicated teams of friends. +But is it not more probable that the secret of such success is poverty +of personality rather than richness; and that so many people receive a +share of friendship, of sympathy, of comprehension, because each +receives only very little; because the universal friend is too obtuse to +mind anybody's faults, and too obtuse, also, to mind anybody's great +virtues? In short, do not such women pay people merely in the paper +money of attention, which can be multiplied at pleasure, rather than in +the gold coin of sympathy, of which the supply is extremely small? + +Be this as it may, Mme. d'Albany, after having been, in the earlier +period of her life, essentially the woman who had one friend, who let +the wax of her nature be stamped in one clear die, became, in the twenty +years which separate the death of Alfieri from her own, pre-eminently +the woman with many friends, a blurred personality in which we recognise +traces of the mental effigy of many and various people. Mme. d'Albany +was, therefore, in superficial sympathy with nearly everyone, and in +deep antagonism with no one: she was the ideal of the woman who keeps a +literary and political salon. At that time especially, when Italy was +visited only by people of a certain social standing, society was carried +on by a most complicated system of letters of introduction, and everyone +of any note brought a letter to Mme. d'Albany. "_La grande lanterne +magique passe tout par votre salon_," wrote Sismondi to the Countess; +and the metaphor could not be truer. Writers and artists, beautiful +women, diplomatists, journalists, pedants, men of science, women of +fashion, Chateaubriand and Mme. de Stael, Lamartine and Paul Louis +Courier, Mme. Recamier and the Duchess of Devonshire, Canova and +Foscolo, and Sismondi and Werner, the whole intellectual world of the +Empire and the Restoration, all seem to be projected, figures now +flitting past like shadows, now dwelling long, clear and coloured, upon +the rather colourless and patternless background of Mme. d'Albany's +house; nay, of Mme. d'Albany herself. Such readers as may wish to have +all these figures, remembered or forgotten, pointed out to them, called +by their right names and titles, treated with the perfect impartiality +of a _valet de place_ expounding monuments, or of a chamberlain +announcing the guests at a _levee_, may refer to the two volumes of +Baron Alfred von Reumont; and such readers (and I hope they are more +numerous) as may wish to examine some of the nobler and more interesting +of these projected shadows of men and women, may read with pleasure and +profit the letters of Sismondi, Bonstetten, Mme. de Souza and Mme. de +Stael to the Countess of Albany, and the interesting pages of criticism +in which they have been imbedded by M. St.-Rene Taillandier. With regard +to myself, I feel that the time and space which have been given me in +order to analyse or reconstruct the curious type and curious individual +called Louise d'Albany are both nearly exhausted; and I can therefore +select to dwell upon, of these many magic-lantern men and women, of +these friends of the Countess, only two, because they seem to me to +exemplify my remarks about the friendship of a woman whose vocation it +is to have many friends. The two are Sismondi and Foscolo. + +Two or three years after Alfieri's death, somewhere about the year 1806 +or 1807, there was introduced to Mme. d'Albany a sort of half-Italian, +half-French Swiss, a man young in years and singularly young--with the +peculiar earnestness, gravity, purity which belongs sometimes to +youth--in spirit, Jean Charles Leonard Simonde de Sismondi. Quietly +idealistic, with one of those northern, eminently Protestant minds which +imagine the principle of good to be more solemnly serious, the principle +of evil more vainly negative, than is, alas, the case in this world--M. +de Sismondi, full of the heroism of mediaeval Italy which he was studying +with a view to his great work, came to the house of Alfieri, to the +woman whom Alfieri had loved, as to things most reverend and almost +sacred. The Countess of Albany received him very well; and this good +reception, the motherly cordiality of this woman with that light in her +hazel eyes, that welcoming graciousness in the lines of her mouth, which +Lamartine has charmingly described, with the "_parole suave, manieres +sans appret, familiarite rassurante_," "which made one doubt whether she +was descending to the level of her visitor, or raising him up to her +own,"--this reception by this woman, who was, moreover, still surrounded +by a halo of Alfieri's glory, fairly conquered the heart, the pure, +warm, grave and truthful heart of young Sismondi. He saw her often, on +his way between Geneva, whither he was called by his family business and +his lectures, and Pescia, a little town nestled among the olives of the +Lucchese Apennine, where he was for ever sighing to join his mother, to +resume his walks, his readings with this noble old woman. Florence, the +house on the Lung Arno, had an almost romantic fascination for Sismondi; +those passing visits, at intervals of months, when Mme. d'Albany would +devote herself entirely to the traveller, sit chatting, or rather (we +feel that) listening to the young man's enthusiastic talk about liberty, +letters, and philanthropy, about Alfieri and Mme. de Stael, enabled +Sismondi to make up for himself a sort of half-imaginary Countess of +Albany, to whom he poured out all his hopes and fears in innumerable +letters, for whom he longed as (alas!) we perhaps long only for the +phantoms of our own creating. That Mme. d'Albany was, after all, a +shallow woman; that she adored a mediocre M. Fabre (to whom Sismondi +invariably sent respectful messages) and half disliked the memory of +Alfieri; that she had called Mme. de Stael, Sismondi's goddess, about +whom he was for ever expatiating, "a mad woman who always wants to +inspire passions, and feels nothing, and makes her readers feel nothing" +(I am quoting from an unpublished letter at Siena); that she preferred +despotism on the whole to liberty, and had no particular belief or +interest in the heroic things of the present and future; that she was a +lover of gossip and scandal, sometimes (as Gino Capponi says) hard and +disagreeable; that she inspired some men, like d'Azeglio and Giordani, +with a positive repulsion as a vulgar-minded, spiteful, meddlesome old +thing; that there should be any other Mme. d'Albany than the one of his +noble fancy, than the woman whose image (fashioned by himself) he loved +to unite with the image of his own sweet, serious, shy, noble-minded +mother: all these things M. de Sismondi, who never guessed himself to be +otherwise than the most unpoetical and practical of men, never dreamed +of. So Sismondi went on writing to Mme. d'Albany, pouring out his grief +at Mme. de Stael's persecutions, his schemes of general improvement, all +the interests which filled his gentle, austere, and enthusiastic mind. +1814 came, and 1815. Sismondi had always hated, with the hatred of an +Italian mediaeval patriot, and the hatred of an eighteenth-century +philanthropist, the despotism, the bureaucratic levelling, the great +military slaughters of Napoleon; but when he saw Napoleon succeeded by +the inept and wicked governments of the Restoration, his heart seemed to +burst. A Swiss, scarcely acquainted with France, the passion for the +principles of liberty and good sense and progress which France had +represented, the passion for France itself, burst out in him with +generous ardour. This man suffered intensely at what to him, as to Byron +and to Shelley (we must recollect the introduction of the _Revolt of +Islam_), seemed the battle between progress and retrogression; and +suffered all the more as he was too pure and just-minded not to feel the +impossibility of complete sympathy with either side. Mme. d'Albany +answered his letters with Olympic serenity. What was it to her which got +the upper hand? She was by this time one of those placid mixtures of +optimism and pessimism which do not expect good to triumph, simply +because they do not care whether good does triumph. Sismondi, in his +adoration of her, thought this might be the result of a superior +magnanimity of character; yet he kept conjuring her to take an interest +in the tragedy which was taking place before her eyes. If she will take +no interest, will not Fabre? "Does M. Fabre not feel himself turning +French again?" writes Sismondi, and there is a pathetic insistency +in the question. Fabre thought of his pictures, his collections of +antiques, perhaps of his dinner; of anything save France and political +events. Mme. d'Albany smiled serenely, and chaffed Sismondi a little for +his political passions. Sismondi, of all men the most loyal to the idea +he had formed of his friends, seems never to have permitted himself to +see the real woman, the real abyss of indifference, beneath his ideal +Mme. d'Albany. But there are few things more pathetic, I think, than the +letters of this enthusiastic man to this cold woman; than the belief of +Sismondi--writing that the retrograde measures of which he reads in the +papers give him fits of fever, that the post days on which he expects +political news are days of frenzied expectation--in the moral fibre, +the faculty for indignation, of this pleasant, indifferent, cynical +quasi-widow of Alfieri. + +The story of the Countess and Foscolo is an even sadder instance of +those melancholy little psychological dramas which go on, unseen to the +world, in a man's soul; little dramas without outward events, without +deaths or partings or such-like similar visible catastrophes, but the +action of which is the slow murder of an affection, of an ideal, of a +belief in the loyalty, sympathy, and comprehension of another. The +character and history of Ugo Foscolo, like Chenier, half a Greek in +blood, and more than half a Greek in passionate love of beauty and +indomitable love of liberty, are amongst the most interesting in Italian +literature; and I regret that I can say but little of them in this +place. Reviewing his brief life, his long career from the moment when, +scarcely more than a boy, he had entered the service of liberty as a +soldier, a political writer, and a poet, only to taste the bitterness of +the betrayal of Campo Formio, he wrote, in 1823, from London, where he +was slowly dying, to his sister Rubina: "I am now nearly forty-six; +and you, although younger than myself, can recollect how miserable, +how unquiet and uncertain our lives have always been ever since our +childhood." Poor, vain, passionate and proud, torn between the selfish +impulses of an exactingly sensuous and imaginative nature, and the rigid +sense of duty of a heroic and generous mind, Ugo Foscolo was one of the +earliest and most genuine victims of that sickness of disappointed hope +and betrayed enthusiasm, of that _Weltschmerz_ of which personal +misfortunes seemed as but the least dreadful part, that came upon the +noblest minds after the Revolution, and which he has painted, with +great energy and truthfulness, in his early novel _Jacopo Ortis_. His +career broken by his determination never to come to terms with any +sort of baseness, his happiness destroyed by political disappointment, +literary feuds, and a number of love affairs into which his weaker, more +passionate and vainer, yet not more ungenerous temper was for ever +embroiling him, Foscolo came to Florence, ill and miserable, in the year +1812. The Countess of Albany, recognising in him a something--a mixture +of independence, of passion, of vanity, of truthfulness, of pose--which +resembled Alfieri in his earlier days (though, as she was unable to +see, a nobler Alfieri, wider-minded, warmer-hearted, born in a nobler +civilization and destined to give to Italy a nobler example, the pattern +for her Leopardi, than Alfieri had been able to give)--the Countess of +Albany received Foscolo well. His letters are full of allusions to the +hours which he spent seated at the little round table in Mme. d'Albany's +drawing-room, opposite to the "Muse" newly bought of Canova, narrating +to her his many and tangled love affairs; love affairs in which he left +his heart on all the briars, and in which, however, by an instinct which +shows the very nobleness of his nature, he seems to have been impelled +rather towards women whom he must love sincerely and unhappily, than +towards Marchesa di Prie and Lady Ligonier, like Alfieri; love affairs +in which, alas, there was also a good dose of the vanity of a poet and a +notorious beau. Mme. d'Albany, as we have seen, loved gossip; and, being +a kind, helpful woman, she also sincerely liked becoming the confidant +of other folk's woes. She took a real affection for this strange +Foscolo. Foscolo, in return, ill, sore of heart, solitary, gradually +got to love this gentle, sympathising Countess with a sort of filial +devotion, but a filial devotion into which there entered also somewhat +of the feeling of a wounded man towards his nurse, of the feeling of a +devout man towards his Madonna. + +His letters are full of this feeling: "My friend and not the friend of +my good fortune," he writes to Mme. d'Albany in 1813, "I seem to have +left home, mother, friends, and almost the person dearest to my heart in +leaving Florence." Again, "I had in you, _mia Signora_, a friend and a +mother; a person, in short, such as no name can express, but such as +sufficed to console me in the miseries which are perhaps incurable +and interminable." Her letters are a real ray of sunlight in his +gloomy life, they are "so full of graciousness, and condescension and +benevolence and love. I venture to use this last word, because I feel +the sentiment which it expresses in myself towards you." + +His health, his work, his money-matters, his love-affairs, were all +getting into a more and more lamentable condition, in which Mme. +d'Albany's sympathy came as a blessing, when the catastrophes of +1814 and 1815, which to Italy meant the commencement of a state of +degradation and misery much more intolerable and hopeless than any +previous one, came and drowned the various bitternesses of poor +Foscolo's life in a sea of bitterness. "Italy," wrote Foscolo to Mme. +d'Albany in 1814, "is a corpse; and a corpse which must not be touched +if the stench thereof is not to be made more horrible. And yet I see +certain crazy creatures fantasticating ways of bringing her to life; for +myself, I should wish her to be buried with myself, and overwhelmed by +the seas, or that some new Phaeton should precipitate upon her the +flaming heavens, so that the ashes should be scattered to the four +winds, and that the nations coming and to come should forget the infamy +of our times. Amen." + +How strongly we feel in this outburst that, despite his despair, or +perhaps on account of it, Foscolo is himself one of those "crazy +creatures fantasticating ways of bringing Italy to life!" But the +Countess did not understand; she could conceive liking Bonaparte and +serving him, or liking the Restoration and serving it; but to love an +abstract Italy which did not yet exist, to hate equally all those who +deprived it of freedom, that was not within her comprehension. And as +she could not comprehend this feeling, the mainspring of Foscolo's soul, +so she could understand of Foscolo only the slighter, meaner things: his +troubles and intrigues, his loves and quarrels. The moment came when the +grief of miscomprehension was revealed to poor Foscolo; when he saw +how little he was understood by this woman whom he loved as a mother. +Foscolo had refused, latterly, to serve Napoleon; he refused, also, +to serve the Austrians. Hated for his independent ways both by the +Bonapartists and the reactionists, surrounded by spies, he was forced +to quit Italy never to return. He wrote to explain his motives to Mme. +d'Albany. Mme. d'Albany wrote back in a way which showed that she +believed the assertions of Foscolo's enemies; that she ascribed to +cowardice, to meanness, to a base desire to make himself conspicuous, +the self-inflicted exile which he had taken upon him: a letter which the +editor of Foscolo's correspondence describes to us in one +word--unworthy. + +This letter came upon Foscolo like a thunder-clap. "So thus," he wrote +to the Countess in August 1815, "generosity and justice are banished +even from nobler souls. Your letter, Signora Contessa, grieves me, and +confers upon me, at the same time, two advantages: it diminishes +suddenly the perpetual nostalgia which I have felt for Florence, and it +affords me an occasion to try my strength of spirit.... My hatred for +the tyranny with which Bonaparte was oppressing Italy does not imply +that I should love the house of Austria. The difference for me was +that I hoped that Bonaparte's ambition might bring about, if not the +independence of Italy, at least such magnanimous deeds as might raise +the Italians; whereas the regular government of Austria precludes all +such hopes. I should be mad and infamous if I desired for Italy, which +requires peace at any price, new disorders and slaughterings; but I +should consider myself madder still and more infamous if, having despised +to serve the foreigner who has fallen, I should accept to serve the +foreigner who has succeeded.... But if your accusation of inconstancy is +unjust, your accusation that I want to '_passer pour original_' is +actually offensive and mocking." + +Later, in his solitary wanderings, Foscolo's heart seems to have melted +towards his former friend; he wrote her one or two letters, conciliating, +friendly, but how different from the former ones! The Countess of +Albany, whom he had loved and trusted, was dead; the woman who remained +was dear to him as a mere relic of that dead ideal. + +Such is the story of Mme. d'Albany's friendship for two of the noblest +spirits, Sismondi and Foscolo, of their day; the noblest, the one in his +pure austerity, the other in his magnanimous passionateness, that ever +crossed the path of the beloved of Alfieri. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +SANTA CROCE. + + +With her other friends, who gave less of their own heart and asked less +of hers, Mme. d'Albany was more fortunate. She contrived to connect +herself by correspondence with the most eminent men and women of the +most different views and tempers; she made her salon in Florence, as M. +St. Rene Taillandier has observed, a sort of adjunct to the cosmopolitan +salon of Mme. de Stael at Coppet. Her efforts in so doing were crowned +with the very highest success. In 1809 Napoleon requested Mme. d'Albany +to leave Florence for Paris, where, he added with a mixture of brutality +and sarcasm, she might indulge her love of art in the new galleries of +the Louvre, and where her social talents could no longer spread +dissatisfaction with his government, as was the case in Italy. + +The one year's residence in Paris, which Napoleon's jealous meddlesomeness +forced upon her, was, in itself, a very enjoyable time, spent with the +friends whom she had left in '93, and with a whole host of new ones whom +she had made since. She returned to Florence with a larger number of +devoted correspondents than ever; her salon became more and more brilliant; +and when, after Waterloo, the whole English world of politics, fashion, +and letters poured on to the Continent, her house became, as Sismondi +said, the wall on which all the most brilliant figures of the great +magic lantern were projected. + +Thus, seeing crowds of the most distinguished and delightful people, +receiving piles of the most interesting and adoring letters, happy, +self-satisfied, Mme. d'Albany grew into an old woman. Every evening +until ten, the rooms of the Casa Alfieri were thrown open; the servants +in the Stuart liveries ushered in the guests, the tea was served in +those famous services emblazoned with the royal arms of England. The +Countess had not yet abandoned her regal pretensions; for all her +condescending cordiality towards the elect, she could assume airs of +social superiority which some folk scarcely brooked, and she was +evidently pleased when, half in earnest, Mme. de Stael addressed her as +"My dear Sovereign," "My dear Queen," and even when that vulgar woman of +genius, Lady Morgan, made a buffoonish scene about the "dead usurper," +on the death of George III. But Mme. d'Albany herself was getting to +look and talk less and less like a queen, either the Queen of Great +Britain or the Queen of Hearts; she was fat, squat, snub, dressed with +an eternal red shawl (now the property of an intimate friend of mine), +in a dress extremely suggestive of an old house-keeper. She was, when +not doing the queen, cordial, cheerful in manner, loving to have +children about her, to spoil them with cakes and see them romp and +dance; free and easy, cynical, Rabelaisian, if I may use the expression, +as such mongrel Frenchwomen are apt to grow with years; the nick-name +which she gave to a member of a family where the tradition of her and +her ways still persists, reveals a wealth of coarse fun which is rather +strange in a woman who was once the Beatrice or Laura of a poet. She was +active, mentally and bodily, never giving up her multifarious reading, +her letter-writing; never foregoing her invariable morning walk, in a +big bonnet and the legendary red shawl, down the Lung Arno and into the +Cascine. + +Such was Louise of Stolberg, Countess of Albany, widow of Prince Charles +Edward, widow, in a sense, of the poet Vittorio Alfieri; and such, at +the age of seventy-two, did death overtake her, on the 29th January +1824. Her property she bequeathed to Fabre whom a false rumour had +called her husband; and Fabre left it jointly to his native town of +Montpellier, and to his friend the Cavaliere Emilio Santarelli, who +still lives and recollects Mme. d'Albany. + +The famous epitaph, composed by Alfieri for himself, had been mangled by +Mme. d'Albany and those who helped her and Canova in devising his tomb; +the companion epitaph, the one in which Alfieri described the Countess +as buried next to him, was also mangled in its adaptation to a tomb +erected in Santa Croce, entirely separate from Alfieri's. On that +monument of Mme. d'Albany, in the chapel where moulder the frescoes of +Masolino, there is not a word of that sentence of Alfieri's about the +dead woman having been to him dearer and more respected than any other +human thing. Mme. d'Albany had changed into quite another being between +1803 and 1824; the friend of Sismondi, of Foscolo, of Mme. de Stael, the +worldly friend of many friends, seemed to have no connection with the +lady who had wept for Alfieri in the convent at Rome, who had borne +with all Alfieri's misanthropic furies after the Revolution, any more +than with the delicate intellectual girl whom Charles Edward had nearly +done to death in his drunken jealousy. So, on the whole, Fabre, and +whosoever assisted Fabre, was right in concocting a new epitaph. + +But to us, who have followed the career--whose lesson is that of the +meanness which lurks in noble things, the nobility which lurks in mean +ones--of this woman from her inauspicious wedding-day to the placid day +of her death, to us Louise of Stolberg, Countess of Albany, Queen of +Great Britain, France, and Ireland, will remain, for all blame we +may give her and her times, a figure to remember and reflect upon, +principally because of those suppressed words of her epitaph: "_A +Victorio Alferio ultra res omnes dilecta, et quasi mortale numen ab +ipso constanter habita et observata._" + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + 1: I have purposely quoted, almost textually, the account given by + Ewald, lest I should be accused of following Alfieri's vague version. + + 2: The chief sources for this account are Mann's despatches and the + _Memoires_ of Louis Dutens. Alfieri gives no details. + + + + + _UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_ + + THE ENCHANTED WOODS + and other Essays on the Genius of Place + + HORTUS VITAE, or the Hanging Gardens. + Moralising Essays + + THE SPIRIT OF ROME. + Leaves from a Diary + + HAUNTINGS: Fantastic Tales + Second Edition + + THE SENTIMENTAL TRAVELLER. + Notes on Places + + GENIUS LOCI. Second Edition + + POPE JACYNTH. Second Edition + + LIMBO; and Other Essays; + to which is now added + ARIADNE IN MANTUA. + Second Edition + + RENAISSANCE FANCIES AND STUDIES. + Second Edition + + ALTHEA. + Second Edition + + VANITAS: Polite stories. + Second Edition + + LAURUS NOBILIS: + Chapters on Art and Life + + + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: + +Contemporary spellings have generally been retained even where +inconsistent. Missing Punctuation has been silently added, and a few +obvious spelling errors have been corrected. The information about +further volumes by the author has been moved to the end. + +The following additional changes have been made to the text: + + Tales of a Century (1 instance) Tales of the Century + + No sadder way (...) can No sadder way (...) can + well be imagined that landing well be imagined than landing + + has not mad him younger has not made him younger + + probably sown in the swaddling probably sewn in the swaddling + clothes clothes + + cavaliere servante cavaliere servente + + behaving in the way in which behaving in the way of which + he approved he approved + + what glory could he hope what glory could he hope for + among all these monkeys among all these monkeys + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Countess of Albany, by +Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee) + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY *** + +***** This file should be named 28268.txt or 28268.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/8/2/6/28268/ + +Produced by Delphine Lettau and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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