ALFIERI AND THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2603, 3 February 1904, Page 65

ALFIERI AND THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY.

(T.P.'s Weekly.)

One of the most interesting books I ever read is the autobiogra/phy of Aineri, the great Italian poet. They are celebrating, or about to celebrate, his centenary in Italy at this moment, and all true Italians are joining in singing the praises of a •writer to whom they attribute a large share in the rejuvenation both of their nation and of their literature. I have not sufficient acquaintance with Alfieri's works to write with any self-confidence upon them. My interest indeed in him is chiefly as a man and as the writer of one of the autobiographies which take their place among the great books of self-revelaton that literary men have given to the world.

I. Alfieri had no such shameful aird painful tale to tell the world as that inspired madman who made the French Revolution. Jean Jacques Rousseau was a domestic servant, a homeless wanderer, some time in actual want of food, and even when he was a world-wide celebrity had but as much income as would just keep- him above starvation point. There is a certain atmosphere of squalor in the whole story, and especially in the awful chapter in which he describes how, one by one, his children were deposited in the tomb of the Foundling Hospital. Alfieri had an entirely opposite setting for his life. If I remember rightly — I am writing far away from my books — his autobiography begins with the words, "My parents were rich, educated, and noble." And yet there is a certain similarity in the inner life of both the Frenchman and the Italian amid all their differences. In both the mainspring of existence was love — mostly unhappy. Up to a certain point the career of Alfieri is a record of violent, sudden attachments, opening, all, in the same magnificent dawn and promise of being everlasting, and equally ending, all, in disillusion and separation. Interspersed amid these tales are stories of the curious methods which Alfieri took of either passing time or attracting attention. He lived in a period •when Italy had not yet found herself. She was divided into scores of wretched little principalities, with their pinchbeck courts, their tyrannical laws, their world of contemptible etiquette and intrigue, and Italy was nothing better than a geographical expression, or a battle-ground for constant struggles that are no more respectable in the Court of Jiistory than so many Donnybrook Fairs. Restless, tortured by as yet unrevealed genius, proud, rich, Alfieri, like his country, had not yet found himself, and was seeking vent for a miserable soul — as so often happens — in frivolities, wild escapades, that feverish rush through life which is often called the pursuit of pleasure, and should more properly be described as the flight from despair.

H. At one time he -vras a soldier, then he bought vast numbers of horses, and was to be seen passing up and down some of the leading Italian cities driving furiously, and everywhere attracting attention by the long procession of horses that he put to his chariot wheels. He travelled incessantly, always pursued by some demon of restlessness, aud always accompanied by his cavalcades. In the Europe that had not yet learned the railway, he stands out as one of the most characteristic figures of the man -of pleasure, of fashion, and of horses. who did his travels in the grand style. In many respects the early 3 r cars of Alfieri have a certain resemblance to those of that tortured, spirit of our times, the great Russian novelist, Tolstoi, who, out of the depths of the follies and disillusions of his stormy and somewhat empty youth, has created that mournfull wail that has captured and saddened his entire generation in every country of Europe of our times.

It turned out that all these wanderings of Alfieri — all these adventures more or less silly — wers but a preparation for his great literary destiny. The man of fashion, almost illiterate and ignorant of every world except the world of horses, fashion, and social frivolities, had his first moment of conversion to a worthier life when one day he was shown a manuscript of Petrarch as he was passing through Milan. Ec confesses himtelf that the sight of the work filled him with a mad passion of envy and longing and desj>air. At Florence he was brought in contact with art, and it was there that he began his education by studying English and getting glimpses of that mighty world in which the figure of Shakespeare fills the foremost place. In France he became acquainted with French literature, but sxill only as a pastime — Rousseau was used as a solace in an hour of an unhappy love affair.

Curiously erough. the last literature with which this Italian litterateur became acquainted was that of his own country. It throws a curious light on the deplorable condition to which the literature of Italy was reduced in the days of Alfieri that he could scarcely speak his own language till he settled down in Tuscany to regularly study it. and he was then a travelled and matured man.

The first recorded work of Alfieri came quite !>v accident. F>-o had abandoned all hope of ever attaining to anything, liad plunged back into his old life of unrest, and passion for horses, when one cby he found himself at the bedside of oi : c who was dear to him. In the darkness- of that hour, and in the enforced silence of a sickroom, he took up a pencil r.ncl some sheets of paper, and bsgan scribbling down .some

* "A Couri, ixi Ex.lc," by the Msuche-a VitcUcschi (Hatcliinj.on). " The Alfieri Ccnten&>~y," by Count Rusooui (Fortnight'j Ueview *ac .November Y,

lines of a play. He was but little pleased with what he had done, and ultimately he wrote and rewrote the play three times. Then it was ready for the stage and was acted, and so Alfieri almost by chance, and in spite of himself, was launched on his literary career.

V. His wanderings in another respect were also at this same epoch brought to a sudden end. And it is ttos period of his life that brings him into close ioilch with us, and makes him a part of our own history. Few people who read it will ever forget the passage in Alfieri's autobiography in which he describes his first sight of the woman who was destined to exercise such a tremendous influence on the rest of his life, and, in that way, on the life and literature of Italy. She had fair hair, brilliant blue eyes, ond a beautiful complexion, and Alfieri felt at the very first moment this vision of beauty burse upon him that his doom was sealed, and that from this time forward his journeyings were over. The ecstatic description of Alfieri is confirmed by other pens. Bonstetten, a literary celebrity of the eighteenth century — now probably forgotten — say the lady, and this is his description : "The Queen of Hearts, when X knew her in Rome, was of medium height ; she had dark blue eyes, a slightly turned up nose, and the complexion of an English girl. Her expression was bright and piquant, and at the same time &o sympathetic that she turned ail heads." VI. The woman of the "fair skin, blonde hair, and dark eyes" was Louise Princess of Stolberg, known as the Countess of Albany, and no less a personage than the wife of the Young Pretender — that gallant Prince that at one time had conquered all Scotland and half England, and seemed to have the throne of his ancestors in his grasp. But when we meet him now as the husband of the young Princess of Stolberg, that great hour in his life has long since disappeared, and there has been an inteival of aimless wanderings, of discreditable adventures, of appeals for help to friendly monarchs, that are little removed from genteel begging ; above all, Prince Charlie has learned to iind refuge in the "nasty bottle," as one of his friends called it, from his misfortunes and baffled hopes and self-re-proaches, and is no longer anything better than a poor, dependent, incurable sot. VII. In a few sentences the Countess of Albany herself, writing in her old age, has told the miserable story of her youtih. "As regards myself,"' she writes, "Ever since my earliest childhood I hove known misfortunes. I was the fust of my mother's children, and as she wished for a boy I was most unwelcome to ker. In order to get rid of me she married me to the most insupportable man that ever -existend, a man who combined the defects and failings of all classes as well as the vice common to the lower orders — tthat if drink."

This is not an overdrawn picture of the horrible transaction which gave over Louisa of Stolberg to the Young Pretender. Shs had at this time, and, indeed, thoughout her life, a character which was well calculated to capture the devotion of any man who was capable of anything like decent feslixig. She had an imperturable temper and an evenness and brightness of spirit that made her everywhere popular. In addition she wa& a woman of considerable mind and accomplishments. She spoke five languages perfectly; she was a great reader ; she talked well, and she was always keenly interested in intellectual things.

But the time liad pt.s?ed when this or anything else couid redeem the fallen scion of the House of Stuart. He Tras fnirly decent during the first year of his married life, but old vice conquered him again, and he vras drunk every night of his life. Unlike many drunkards he had no shame in letting the world see his degradation. The travelling Englishman who found himself in Florence or Rome had to write home fcliat lie saw the Yoimg Pretender brought in nightly by his v?iets to a box in the theatre, and laid down helpless and spoechIbss on a bench. Jtalousy now was added ta all the other children of darkness and of evil that had ent»r?d into this lost nature. He watched every movement of his unfortunate vife. until marriage became not an association, but an abject and intolerable slavery. Finally there came the last, and worst of all. The iuisbcui'l, in a paroxysm of drunken jealousy vnCi fury, beat his wife, and mode her fear for her life. VIII. Things had almost reached this point when Alfieri had that first memorable sight of the lody with tho "fiir skin, blonde hair, ar.d dark eyes."' Alfieri tuis thca 30 ye n rs .of a'^e. He was apoiooching tlw time when his vt.indering purposes were about to be all concentrated in hit literary work. But he had always been a man v. ho found his inspirrtion, citi er to <;ood or evil. In a woman, and at th> moireut he vas at the laming point v. hen a ivnnnn wa<- to lead him ciov. n to an üby^s of unfulfilled work or to ex 'lt him to the levsl of Yds genius. Alfieri was fortun.ie enough to find in tho Countc-s of Alb'-.^y a good genii!?. "I found,"' he viitcs in hi'- aulobKij>rr.phy, 'That I had at last mot air .-soixi.'-n for whom 1 had Ken scirth^i'r. ho, ir'^-rid of bfiag like Al the other 5 ! I had kno-An, aa ob'tcu-l^ to literary un/ic-. ;ti jnspc'limont to ii«( <\\l occiip.'tinn- - aii'i ,i dptriiuen' to ."11 elevated tho sight", w.-s an incentive and a noble example to every great work, and I, reco-nish.g m>l apprccl. ti \, ?ucb t. rare treasure, gave my&-"ii up enmcly to her."'

Kpi iq , fpdeeo. v, as a slrirje, tiy;;^ — I Ji.-d alpio'-i v. I'ttc-ii Inn >ble — .crvitud" to v, Jiicli these tv, o people lreie iubj^ctcd. Alfieri v, ould sit, beside the Countess in the frout oi iiie box a± Uia theairs. "ciiile i&&

poor wreiched husband lay sleeping h:s diunken sleep at the back on the sofa. A s-iiuation so false was bound ro proouce -etnes of infernal torment. The beatings became moic menacing, the jealousy of the husband more savage, until in the end it came to be a question between the unhappy woman's losing her reason or her IKe. She was ur.?ble to boar the torture any longer, and fled to a convent, and, havirg'the < -apathy of all Italy on her side, was allowed at last to break her chums. IX. From this t : ni2 forward Alfieri's genius blo^omed. He was not able to lead a hapoy life — his nature was too stoimy to be 1 ever reollyjnappy. But he ,got much h?ppiness at times "from work and from ihii acme of having found the woman that to him was the ideal. Ihe records of their friendship have something of the exaltation of the love of Dome for JGeatiice, or Petrarch for Laura.

"On carefully leading ths conetpondance of boih Alfieri end the Counifets' (writes the lody from whose interesting volumes I huve taken much of my material) "in wLich either refeis to the other, we notice tr.at

i.eithtr in writing nor even in convcrßa\:on did they cllude to o ie an.thc-r by their Christian na'nie?. T ,Yhr-ii he mentioned her i: v.as always. «s 'la derma ma.' 'Ir nignoia,' or 'la doloa meta di me &te£-«o' ; whilst &he snoke and wrote of him as 'le Comte, or niore generally as 'cet ami in-

compaiJ_ble.' "' To Alfisii this friendship was the stimulus to a fever of composition and of work that finally burnt out a frame that had never been veiy stiong. Tc literature he ga.\e the same almost possessed ardour that he had formerly given to pleasure and to the hunt after emotions. He has Left to Ins country nineteen tragedies, s;x political comedies, a v. -t number of &a tiros fnd opigi-jnii. and numbcrlc-iss lyrics, manj' piose mi" lings, and finillv that wonJeiful autobiography of which I have &o often spo.kan. 'it was literature that indeed was his> final destruction. "He killed himbolf m ith w ork," wrote the Countess ot Albany ; "the last six comcd.es vreie fatal ■o bin"."

"For sever t il months he would not taka sufficient nouushment for fear that india;cstiO'i would interiupt hi woik. Lie died in six chiys" illncs? v»ilhout knowing that Death was near him, and without pain, ji.%t like r> iiickering candla that fin-illy biuii 1 . itfrolf out."'

f'he and Aliicn had loved each other for 26 ye:ir^ when death thus separated them. She* lived for 21 years more. the b°cr,r_va i.i old a o r e <. dowdy, commonplace, berni-iii oVI m whom it v, os> impossible to find a race of thai diixzhr.o; and iniexicpimn bcaiy that lr-d .r.splicd y £ieai po-^r with an nivnou'il pa c -si&n. She married a Fur.o'i paintei- v»ho \\sb many ;.enrs jciiiiy,ei ti'aii herself, and who did not low her, a: J v. ho. till .•iv.ni; her {or m.-ny 1 -. never mtrli ,n e d her ucmc — T. if .