ALBANY, LOUISE MAXIMILIENNE CAROLINE, COUNTESS OF (1752-1824), eldest daughter of Prince Gustavus Adolphus of Stolberg-Gedern, was born at Mons on Sept. 20, 1752. In her youth she was a canoness of Ste. Wandru at Mons, but in her twentieth year she was affianced, at the instigation of the Duke of Berwick and with the secret connivance of the French court, to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, "the Young Pretender," self styled Count of Albany. They were married at Macerata, near Ancona, on Good Friday 1772, and went to live in the old Stuart palace at Rome and later on in Florence.
The marriage was an unhappy one, and in Dec. 178o Louise fled to a neighbouring convent and threw herself on the protection of her brother-in-law, Henry Stuart, Cardinal York. She had already in Florence formed the acquaintance of the poet Vittorio Alfieri, who now followed her to Rome. In 1784 a legal separation be tween the Count and Countess of Albany was arranged, and by Charles's death in 1788 Louise found herself free. In company with Alfieri (to whom rumour said she had been secretly married) she now visited Paris and London, and was cordially received at the English court, George III. granting her an annual pension of L1,600 from the privy purse. Returning to Italy, Alfieri and the countess settled at Florence, where the poet died on Oct. 9, 1803 and was buried in the church of Santa Croce beneath Canova's vast monument erected at Louise's expense. The countess con tinued to reside in the house on the Lung' Arno at Florence, where she held a salon frequented by scientists and men of letters. She died on Jan. 29, 1824 and was buried in Santa Croce.
The countess bequeathed all her property to the companion of her old age, the French painter, Francois Xavier Fabre, who ulti mately gave the greater part of his legacy to the museum of his native town of Montpellier. Two excellent portraits of the Count ess of Albany and of Alfieri, painted by this artist, now hang in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. See Vernon Lee, The Countess of Albany (1884) ; Bibliography. See Vernon Lee, The Countess of Albany (1884) ; Marchesa Vitelleschi, A Court in Exile.