Countess of Cardigan
Rumours spread after she was frequently seen riding without a chaperone in the company of seventh Earl of Cardigan, who famously led the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854, and was a friend of her father. The Earl was still married to the former Mrs. Elizabeth Tollemache Johnstone, whom Cardigan had married in 1826, after she was divorced by another army officer, Lt. Col. Christian Johnstone, although Cardigan was separated from his wife since 1837. Criticism from her father caused her to leave home in 1857. After a period in a hotel, she took a furnished house in Norfolk Street, Park Lane, and became the Earl of Cardigan's mistress. After the Earl's wife died in July, 1858, the couple sailed away together on the Earl's yacht and married in Gibraltar on September 28, 1858. She was shunned by polite society, but was an accomplished musician and horsewoman, and acknowledged as a leading courtesan. She was left a life interest in the Cardigan estates on her husband's death in March, 1868.
Read more about this topic: Adeline, Countess Of Cardigan And Lancastre
Famous quotes containing the words countess of and/or countess:
“And call ye this to utter what is just,
You that of justice hold the sov’reign throne?
And call ye this to yield, O sons of dust,
To wronged brethren ev’ry man his own?”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalm LVIII (Paraphrased by The Countess of Pembroke)
“Strange that the vanity which accompanies beauty—excusable, perhaps, when there is such great beauty, or at any rate understandable—should persist after the beauty was gone.”
—Mary A. [Elizabeth, Countess Von] Arnim (1866–1941)