Hoppner, for one, approved of Byron’s decision, writing him,
Whether the convent in which you have placed her be well conducted or not, we of course . . . cannot be supposed competent to judge; but if we may form any opinion of the merits of a boarding school education in England from what we know of the child’s Mama, I can have little hesitation in saying the convent is not likely to be worse. On the other question of religion it is one on which there naturally must be a diversity of opinion.
At the beginning of August, Shelley’s health had improved enough so that he set out to visit Byron in Ravenna and to check on Allegra. Shelley had sent Byron a copy of a new poem, Adonais, his memorial to John Keats, who had died in April at the age of twenty-six, three years younger than Shelley. Shelley attached a note in which he belittled his own work in comparison to Byron’s: “I send you—as Diomed gave Glaucus his brazen arms for those of gold—some verses I wrote on the death of Keats.” In the poem, Shelley blamed bad reviews for Keats’s untimely death. Byron was not an admirer of Keats’s poetry, but of course he loathed reviewers, who had savaged the first two cantos of Don Juan. (The British Critic: “a narrative of degrading debauchery in doggrel rhyme.” The Eclectic Review: “poetry in which the deliberate purpose of the Author is to corrupt by inflaming the mind, to seduce to the love of evil which he has himself chosen as his good.”)
On the way to Byron’s, Shelley stopped at Livorno, where Claire had gone to bathe in the sea to cure an attack of what was said to be scrofula, a form of tuberculosis. Shelley arrived late in the evening of August 3. He spent the next day, his twenty-ninth birthday, with Claire. Her journal entry read: “Saturday August 4th. S’s Birthday 29 yrs. Rise at five—Row in the Harbour with S—Then call upon the Countess Tolomei. Then we sail into the sea. A very fine warm day. the white sails of ships upon the horizon looked like doves stooping over the water. Dine at the Giardinetto. S—goes at two.” Shelley kept this detour a secret from both Mary and Byron.
When Shelley arrived at Ravenna, Byron showed him a letter he had received from Hoppner about a year before. This was the source of Byron’s belief that Claire had given birth to Shelley’s child in Naples; that Shelley abandoned it in the foundling hospital; that Shelley had previously tried to get an abortion for Claire and had kept Mary in the dark about the whole matter. The Hoppners had learned this from Elise and believed it. Byron tended to believe the story, but was not sure that Elise was a credible witness.
Shelley wrote to Mary and asked her to deny the story “which you only can effectually rebut.” Though Mary was in no position to refute or confirm it, she wrote a long letter, claiming that Elise’s story was a malicious lie. She explained that Elise had been put up to this slur by her husband, Paolo Foggi. Mary passionately asserted that her marriage had “ever been undisturbed.” Neither her letter nor the one Shelley sent to her mentioned the origin of the baby Elena herself. There is no record of whether Claire was informed about this exchange. Byron kept Mary’s letter and may not have shown it to the Hoppners, who afterward kept the story in circulation.
Aside from that matter, Byron cheered Shelley up and imposed his routine on him for the next ten days. Byron arose at midday and the two talked until six; afterward they went riding and sat up all night in conversation. Shelley wrote to Peacock complaining about the sense of inferiority he felt when he was with Byron. “I write nothing, and probably shall write no more. It offends me to see my name classed among those who have no name. If I cannot be something better, I had rather be nothing.”
Percy visited Allegra in the convent before he left Ravenna. He went alone; never once did Byron visit his daughter there, although the Countess Guiccioli did. Percy had always loved Allegra, seeing her as part of his family, and he spent three hours at the convent. He brought her a gift of a gold chain and some sweets, noticing that she shared the sweets with a friend and the nuns, “not much like the old Allegra.” Discipline was supposedly strict at the convent, but Shelley saw no evidence that it was severe. “Her light & airy figure & her graceful motions were a striking contrast to the other children there—she seemed a thing of a finer race & a higher order,” he wrote. After overcoming Allegra’s initial shyness, he was soon running and skipping with her through the garden. “Before I went away,” he wrote Mary, “she made me run all over the convent, like a mad thing.” The nuns were apparently retiring for their afternoon naps, and mischievously Allegra began ringing the large bell that was the signal for them to assemble. Shelley noted that “it required all the efforts of the prioresses to prevent the spouses of God to render themselves dressed or undressed to the accustomed signal. Nobody scolded her for these scappature [escapades]: so I suppose that she is well treated as far as temper is concerned.”
He did have some criticisms, blaming Allegra’s paleness on the fact that the convent did not serve vegetarian meals, and the religious atmosphere, of course, was not to his liking. He noted that Allegra “knows certain orazioni by heart & talks & dreams of Paradise & angels & all sorts of things—and has a prodigious list of saints—and is always talking of the Bambino. This fuora will do her no harm—but the idea of bringing up so sweet a creature in the midst of such trash till sixteen!” When Shelley asked Allegra whether she had a message for her father, the girl answered that he should come and visit her and bring “la mammina with him.” She was referring to Teresa. Shelley never told Claire that her daughter had virtually forgotten her.
Shelley had made the trip to Ravenna with more than Allegra in mind. Both he and Byron had felt the sting of unfavorable reviews; now Shelley proposed they cooperate in a venture that would enable the two of them to strike back. They would invite Leigh Hunt to join them in Pisa and start a liberal political journal that would not be subject to the harsh restrictions on the press that were currently part of British law. Byron was thinking of leaving Ravenna in any case, for the Gambas, including Teresa, had been forced to flee after the Austrian authorities discovered a Carbonari plot.
On the way home, Shelley stopped at Florence, where he met the countess. Shelley described her as “a very pretty sentimental, innocent, superficial Italian, who has sacrifized [sic] an immense fortune to live for Lord Byron; and who, if I know any thing of my friend, of her, or of human nature will hereafter have plenty of leisure & opportunity to repent of her rashness.” The countess, in turn, had her own impression of Shelley at this time:
It was said that in his adolescence he was good-looking—but now he was no longer so. His features were delicate but not regular—except for his mouth which however was not good when he laughed, and was a little spoiled by his teeth, the shape of which was not in keeping with his refinement. . . . He was also extraordinary in his garb, for he normally wore a jacket like a young college boy’s, never any gloves nor polish on his boots—and yet among a thousand he would always have seemed the most finished of gentlemans [sic]. His voice was shrill—even strident and nevertheless it was modulated by the drift of his thoughts with a grace, a gentleness, a delicacy that went to the heart. . . . Perhaps never did anyone ever see a man so deficient in beauty who could still produce an impression of it. . . . It was the fire, the enthusiasm, of his Intelligence that transformed his features.
Byron began making plans to move from the Palazzo Guiccioli (where he still resided, despite everything that had occurred) to Pisa. The mother superior of the convent, hearing of Byron’s intended departure, invited him to visit Allegra before he left. The nun enclosed a note in Allegra’s own childish handwriting (in Italian), showing how precocious she was, since she was not quite five:
My Dear Papa —
It being fair-time I should so much like a visit from my Papa, as I have many desires to satisfy; will you not please your Allegrina who loves you so?
Byron never answered the letter and did not visit. Instead, he passed Allegra’s letter on to a friend, calling it “sincere enough but not very flattering—for she wants to see me because it ‘is the fair’ to g
et paternal Gingerbread—I suppose.” On October 29, Byron left Ravenna. He left behind the more decrepit animals—a goat with a broken leg, a fish-eating heron, an old mutt, two ugly monkeys, and a badger on a chain. He also left behind unpaid bills and lastly, his four-year-old daughter in the convent, discarded as easily as the rest.
At the same time Byron arrived in Pisa, Claire was leaving the city for Florence, where she was to start a new life looking after someone else’s children. “Just before Empoli,” she wrote in her journal, “we passed Lord B—and his travelling train.” It was hard to miss Byron’s caravan, which consisted of his enormous carriage and several wagons carrying his personal possessions as well as the menagerie of animals he did bother to transport. He caused quite a stir as he passed through the villages along the road from Ravenna to Pisa. Byron did not see Claire, but through the window of the public coach in which she traveled, she caught a look at his pale, handsome face. She would never see him again.
In Pisa, Byron received the reviews of cantos 3, 4, and 5 of Don Juan—no better than the previous ones. The British Critic: “spawned in filth and darkness”; The Edinburgh Magazine: “poisoning the current of fine poetry . . . ribaldry and blasphemy.”
By February of 1822, Claire was planning to take a job as a governess in Vienna, where her brother Charles now lived. This would mean she might not be able to see Allegra for a long time, so once again she pleaded with Byron, begging him to allow her to visit her daughter. “My dear Friend, I conjure you do not make the world dark to me, as if my Allegra were dead.” Byron’s refusal was a factor in changing Claire’s mind: instead of going to Vienna, she remained in Florence.
In the early spring Claire’s concern about Allegra increased. She even hatched a plan to remove the child from the convent with the aid of a forged letter. She tried to enlist the Shelleys in the plot, which had echoes in the past: Mary Wollstonecraft had kidnapped her sister from her husband; Shelley had wanted to rescue his own sister from school. For once, Mary and Percy acted like grown-ups and turned down Claire’s plan. Mary further tried to dissuade her by pointing out that Allegra was in a part of Italy that was relatively free of disease. She also warned Claire that it was unwise to irritate Byron, who was wealthy and had powerful friends. “L. B. would use any means to find you out,” she wrote, and if Shelley were involved in the scheme, Byron might challenge him to a duel. “Another thing I mention,” wrote Mary. “Spring is our unlucky season. No spring [since 1815] has passed for us without some piece of ill luck.”
Shelley, of course, was hoping to establish the new literary journal with Byron, and needed his financial support. He did, however, go to Byron and ask him to make some gesture that would placate Claire. Claire, who heard about this after the fact, said Byron merely responded with “a shrug of impatience, and the exclamation that women could not live without making scenes.”
Claire dropped the kidnapping plans, but on April 9, she wrote Mary again to express her fears: “I am truly uneasy for it seems to me some time since I have heard any news from Allegra. I fear she is sick.” Claire’s intuition was on target this time, for Allegra was indeed very ill. Four days later, Byron’s Italian banker, who had recommended the convent school, was informed by the reverend mother that Allegra was suffering from a fever. A physician from Ravenna, Dr. Rasi, had been called in and feared that Allegra was suffering from typhus, which was raging in the area.
On April 16, Byron was informed that Allegra needed to be bled because the fever had attacked her chest, but the child was supposed to be out of danger. His banker wrote Byron that he had visited the convent and saw that Allegra was being attended by three physicians and all the nuns. “If there is any fault, it is of too much care,” he said. Byron recommended a well-known doctor, saying he would pay for the man’s services. He still did not realize that Allegra’s sickness was life threatening, and did not mention her condition to anyone else.
The next message from the convent, on April 22, announced the death of Allegra. She had succumbed, probably to typhus, at ten in the morning on April 20. She was five years and three months old. The entry in the convent’s record book said that Allegra’s “extraordinary qualities of heart and of mind, her rare talents, and the lovableness of her character will cause her to be long remembered by all those who had the happiness to know her, and especially the nuns whose delight she was.”
Teresa, now living in Pisa with her brother, was asked to break the sad news to Byron. She described his reaction: “A mortal paleness spread itself over his face, his strength failed him, and he sunk into a seat. . . . He remained immoveable in the same attitude for an hour, and no consolation . . . seemed to reach his ears, far less his heart.” The next day, he had become somewhat reconciled, Teresa wrote. “‘She is more fortunate than we are,’ he said; ‘besides her position in the world would scarcely have allowed her to be happy. It is God’s will—let us mention it no more.’ And from that day he would never pronounce her name.” His reaction could indicate guilt as well as grief. Mary Shelley would later say that he “felt the loss, at first bitterly—he also felt remorse.”
Byron’s own description of his feelings was not so extreme. He passed on the news in a letter to Shelley, reporting that he was coping:
The blow was stunning and unexpected; for I thought the danger over. . . . But I have borne up against it as I best can, and so far successfully, that I can go about the usual business of life with the same appearance of composure, and even greater. . . . I do not know that I have any thing to reproach in my conduct, and certainly nothing in my feelings and intentions toward the dead. But it is a moment when we are apt to think that, if this or that had been done, such event might have been prevented—though every day and hour shows us that they are the most natural and inevitable. I suppose that Time will do his usual work—Death has done his.
Godwin himself could hardly have put it better.
Percy and Mary worried what Claire’s reaction would be. She was currently with friends in La Spezia on the coast, looking for summer housing for herself and the Shelleys. On her return to Pisa, Percy Shelley kept the news from her, waiting until they were settled in the house where they were to spend the summer. Even here, it was only after Claire guessed that something was wrong that she found out that her tragic premonitions had come true. On the evening of April 30, Claire overheard the name Bagnacavallo mentioned in the next room; when she appeared in the doorway, there was an abrupt silence in the conversation. Demanding to know the truth, she received the news with great dignity. She did not break down publicly, but wrote nothing at all in her journal for five months. Shelley feared that Claire might go mad with grief. Instead Claire returned to Florence to her job as a governess and kept on good enough terms with the Shelleys that she agreed to spend the summer with them. Mary was surprised that Claire managed to maintain her composure so well.
She was hiding what lay beneath the surface. Later, when Claire went through with her plans to go to Vienna, she wrote a friend that “I tried the whole journey to follow your advice and admire the scenery—dearest Lady it was all in vain . . . I only saw my lost darling.” (When Claire was an old woman, she would cling to the belief that Allegra had not died and that Byron had sent a goat to England in a sealed coffin.)
Some of her wretched grief broke through in a cold and angry letter to Byron which he read and then sent to Shelley. The contents must have been horrible, for Shelley burned it and drafted his own letter to Byron on Claire’s behalf:
I will not describe her grief to you; you have already suffered too much; and, indeed, the only object of this letter is to convey her last requests to you, which, melancholy as one of them is, I could not refuse to ask, and I am sure you will readily grant. She wishes to see the coffin before it is sent to England, and I have ventured to assure her that this consolation, since she thinks it such, will not be denied her. . . . She also wished you would give her a portrait of Allegra, and if you have it, a lock of her hair, howe
ver small.
Byron did send Claire the portrait, a miniature that she kept until her death. Byron offered to make any funeral arrangements that Claire desired, but then complained at the high price of the embalming, claiming that it was the amount usually charged for an adult, and asking for a two-thirds discount. The Italian banker, who said, “I wish I had never met the noble Lord,” footed the bill and later collected from Byron’s estate.
The body was sent to England, where Byron wanted John Murray to make arrangements to have Allegra buried at Harrow, Byron’s old school. He intended that she be interred inside the church with a memorial tablet reading,
In Memory of
Allegra
daughter of G. G. Lord Byron,
who died at Bagnacavallo,
inItaly, April20th,1822.
aged five years and three months
“I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.”
—2nd Samuel, XII,23.
The choice of this particular verse was odd, considering that Byron had never visited his daughter after sending her to the convent school. In any case, because Allegra was illegitimate, and to soothe the feelings of Lady Byron, who sometimes worshipped in the church, Allegra was buried under what one Byron biographer called “the present doormat,” just inside the door, and the tablet was never erected. When he learned of the brouhaha about Allegra’s burial, Byron wrote that it seemed “the epitome or miniature of the Story of my life.” Byron, who knew he had been an inattentive father, later wrote of Allegra, “While she lived, her existence never seemed necessary to my happiness. But no sooner did I lose her, than it appeared to me as if I could not live without her.”
The Monsters Page 29