NO CROWN FOR THE QUEEN By Margaret Mitchiner
Miss Mitchiner's biography of the Young Pretender's wife (Cape, 12s. 6d.) is as readable as most novels and yet scrupulously accurate and fair to all the parties concerned. Louise de Stolberg, daughter of a minor Saxon prince in the Austrian service; had the ill luck at nineteen to marry Prince Charles Edward, who in 5772 was thirty-three years older than herself and a peevish drunk- ard. She bore with him for eight years and then left him for her lover, Alfieri, who was attracted not less by her wit than by her personal charms. Miss Mitchiner records with dry humour the lady's care to keep up appearances, so that she was received at the Court of Geoige III, and after the French revolution had an English pension to replace the French allowance that had stopped. The highly temperamental Alfieri, whom she would not marry but tended till his death, and the benevolent but foolish Cardinal York who sheltered her in his palace, are leading figures in i his amusing story, largely elaborated from the Stuart papers at Windsor. The Countess of Albany, as Louise was styled, was indubitably a clever woman.
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