Correspondence of Count D'Orsay.-Letters to Landor, Forster, Math- 429 A MEMOIR OF THE LITERARY LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON. CHAPTER I. LA CONTESSA GUICCIOLI, NOW MADAME LA MARQUISE DE BOISSY. THIS lady is the daughter of the Comte Gamba, descended from one of the first families of Ravenna,* Teresa Gamba was born at Ravenna in 1802. She was educated at a convent, and was removed from one by her father, to be married, at the age of sixteen, to an old nobleman of considerable wealth and very extensive landed property on the borders of Ancona and Bologna-the Comte Guiccioli, a friend in early life of Alfieri. The comte was not only old enough to be the father of this young lady (who was his third wife), but was even some years older than her father. Youth, beauty, and intellect, united with age, ugliness, and mindlessness, proved an incongruous combination of jarring elements: antipathies, aversion, discords, and separation were the result of this ill-starred, ill-assorted union. * The Countess Guiccioli descends from a long line of illustrious ancestors. Her grandmother, a celebrated beauty in her time, was daughter to the Marquis di Bagno, of Mantua; and her mother, who died in childbirth only a year or so after the young countess's marriage, was a very handsome lady, and daughter of the Contessa Macherelli, one of whose sisters married the Count Cobentzel, of Vienna, and by another sister the family became allied to the noble houses of Erdeddi, Nadasti, and Esterhazy.-Diary in Italy, vol. ii., p. 53. |