Albany

Albany, LOUISA, COUNTESS OF, was born in 1752, the daughter of Prince Gustav Adolf of Stolberg, who fell in the battle of Leuthen (1757). A bright, merry girl of nineteen, in 1772 she was married to Prince Charles Edward, no longer 'bonny,' and no longer 'young,' but a selfish worn-out sot. No children came of the marriage; and in 1780, to escape from ill-usage, the countess sought refuge in a nunnery. Three years later she obtained a separation; both before and after her husband's death (1788), she lived with the poet Alfieri (q.v.), and on his death (1803), with a French painter, Fabre; but it was by the poet's side, twenty-one years later, she was buried (1824) in the church of Santa Croce at Florence. See Reumont's Gräfin von Albany (2 vols. Berl. 1860), and Vernon Lee's Countess of Albany (1884).