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| ALFIERI AND THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY From the original portrait in the possession of the Marchesa A. Alfieri de Sostegno. Click to ENLARGE |
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 myprevious studies of eighteenth-century Italy), I haveavailed myself largely of Baron Alfred von Reumont'slarge work Die Gräfin von Albany (published in 1862);and of the monograph, itself partially founded on theforegoing, of M. St. René Taillandier, entitled LaComtesse d'Albany, published in Paris in 1862. Baronvon Reumont's two volumes, written twenty years agoand when the generation which had come into personalcontact with the Countess of Albany had notyet entirely died out; and M. St. René Taillandier'svolume, which embodied the result of his researchesinto the archives of the Musée Fabre at Montpellier;might naturally be expected to have exhausted all theinformation obtainable about the subject of their andmy studies. This has proved to be the case verymuch less than might have been anticipated. Thepublication, by Jacopo Bernardi and Carlo Milanesi,of a number of letters of Alfieri to Sienese friends,has afforded me an insight into Alfieri's characterand his relations with the Countess of Albany suchas was unattainable to Baron von Reumont and toM. St. René Taillandier. The examination, by myselfand my friend Signor Mario Pratesi, of severalhundreds of MS. letters of the Countess of Albanyexisting in public and private archives at Siena andat Milan, has added an important amount of what Imay call psychological detail, overlooked by Baronvon Reumont and unguessed by M. St. René Taillandier.I have, therefore, I trust, been able toreconstruct the Countess of Albany's spiritual likenessduring the period—that of her early connection withAlfieri—which my predecessors have been satisfied todespatch in comparatively few pages, counterbalancingthe thinness of this portion of their biographies by adegree of detail concerning the Countess's latter years,and the friends with whom she then corresponded,which, however interesting, cannot be considered asvital to the real subject of their works.
Besides the volumes of Baron von Reumont andM. St. René Taillandier, I have depended mainly uponAlfieri's autobiography, edited by Professor Teza, andsupplemented by Bernardi's and Milanesi's Lettere diVittorio Alfieri, published by Le Monnier in 1862.Among English books that I