ALLEGRA BYRON

'Clara Allegra Byron' (January 15, 1817 - April 20, 1822), initially named Alba, meaning "dawn," or "white," by her mother, was the illegitimate daughter of George Gordon, Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont, the stepsister of Mary Shelley.^[1]
Born in Bath, England, she initially lived with her mother and Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Claire Clairmont hoped that her daughter would be more financially comfortable and would have a better chance at a good life if she lived with her father. Byron, hostile to Claire and initially skeptical that he had fathered her daughter, took custody of Allegra under the condition that her mother have no further contact with her. He requested that her name be changed from Alba, which related to "Albé," Claire Clairmont's nickname for Byron, to Allegra, an Italian name. The child was baptized with the name Clara Allegra before her mother relinquished her to Byron. Byron himself had lost custody of his legitimate daughter, Augusta Ada Byron, and was denied any role in her upbringing or a chance to see her. Byron discussed spelling Allegra's surname as "Biron" instead of as "Byron" to further distinguish her from his legitimate daughter.
Allegra was granted a few brief reunions with her mother, but lived her short life mainly with boarders chosen by Byron or in an Italian convent. She was visited only intermittently by her father, who displayed inconsistent paternal interest in her.

Contents

Resemblances to Byron

Convent education

Death, burial and a memorial

Notes

References

External links

Resemblances to Byron

Byron was pleased with Allegra's resemblances to himself in health and temperament. When she was 18 months old, he wrote in a letter to a friend: "My bastard came three days ago—very like—healthy—noisy & capricious." ^[2] In an 1818 letter to his half-sister Augusta Leigh, Byron wrote that "She is very pretty—remarkably intelligent ... She has very blue eyes—that singular forehead—fair curly hair—and a devil of a spirit—but that is Papa's." ^[3] In 1819, in another letter to Augusta Leigh, Byron described two and a half-year-old Allegra as "very droll" and again commented on her resemblance to himself in physical appearance, temperament and interests: (She) "has a very good deal of the Byron. Can't articulate the letter 'r' at all—frowns and pouts quite in our way—blue eyes—light hair growing ''darker'' daily—and a dimple in the chin—a scowl on the brow—white skin—sweet voice—and a particular liking of Music—and of her own way in every thing—is that not B. all over?" ^[4] The child had forgotten any English she had learned and now spoke only Venetian Italian.^[5]
As she grew older, Allegra also demonstrated a talent for acting and singing. Byron's mistress Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli, whom Allegra called "mammina," remarked on Allegra's talent for mimicking the servants and for singing popular songs. Byron felt her talent for mimickry, another talent she shared with him, might amuse other people in the short term but would eventually be a cause of trouble for her.^[6]

Convent education

Percy Bysshe Shelley, who visited the toddler Allegra while she was being boarded with a family chosen by Byron, had a different opinion of the child's living arrangements over the years. He often tried to persuade Byron to let Claire Clairmont see her daughter and they thought of ways to regain custody of her. He wrote his wife Mary Shelley that Allegra looked pale and quiet when he saw her in 1818.^[6] When he saw her again in 1821, when she was four, he again felt she looked pale and delicate and was infuriated by the Roman Catholic education she was receiving. "(Besides) Paradise & angels ... she has a prodigious list of saints—and is always talking of the Bambino ... The idea of bringing up so sweet a creature in the midst of such trash till Sixteen!" he wrote. The child asked Shelley to "tell her mother she wanted a kiss and a gold dress and would he please beg her Papa and Mammina to visit her."^[8]
Claire Clairmont was also infuriated by Byron's decision to send her daughter to a convent in March 1821. Shortly afterwards, she wrote him a furious, condemnatory letter accusing him of breaking his promise that their daughter would never be apart from one of her parents. She felt that the physical conditions in convents were unhealthy and the education provided was poor and was responsible for "the state of ignorance & profligacy of Italian women, all pupils of Convents. They are bad wives & most unnatural mothers, licentious & ignorant they are the dishonour & unhappiness of society ... This step will procure to you an innumerable addition of enemies & of blame." (Eisler 1999: 690-691). In March 1822, she dreamed up a plot to kidnap her daughter from the convent and asked Shelley to forge a letter of permission from Byron. Shelley refused.^[9]

Byron had arranged for Allegra to be educated in the convent precisely because he, unlike his former lover Claire, thought favorably of the manners and attitudes of Italian women who had received convent educations. He also believed his daughter, given her illegitimacy, would have a better chance of marrying well in Italy than she would in England. A Roman Catholic girl with a suitable dowry, raised in a convent, would have a decent chance of marrying into high Italian society. At the suggestion of Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli, the four-year-old Allegra was sent to the Capuchin convent in Bagnacavallo, where she was doted on by the nuns, who called her "Allegrina," and was visited by Teresa's relatives.
Probably with considerable assistance from the nuns, four-year-old Allegra wrote her father a letter in Italian from the convent, dated September 21 1821, asking him to visit her: "My dear Papa. It being fair-time, I should like so much a visit from my Papa as I have many wishes to satisfy. Won't you come to please your Allegra who loves you so?"^[10]

Death, burial and a memorial

Byron never visited the child during the 13 months she was in the convent, according to Eisler's biography. Allegra died on April 20, 1822 of what some biographers have identified as typhus. Eisler speculated that she died after suffering a reoccurance of her malarial-type fevers, which she had also suffered from the previous autumn.
Byron sent her body to England and wrote an inscription for her gravestone that read: "In memory of Allegra, daughter of G.G., Lord Byron, who died at Bagna Cavallo in Italy, April 20, 1822, Aged Five Years and Three Months,-'I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.'-2 Samuel, xii, 23"
Scandalized by Byron's reputation and the child's illegitimacy, the rector of St. Mary's Parish Church in Harrow, Middlesex, England, refused to place a plaque on Allegra's grave and permitted her only to be buried at the entrance of the church without a marker. When Byron died two years later, the rector also refused to bury him at St. Mary's Parish Church in Harrow. He was also denied burial at Westminster. He was ultimately buried at St. Mary Magdalens' Church in Hucknall Torkard, Nottinghamshire, England.
In 1980, The Byron Society placed a memorial plaque for Allegra at Harrow, inscribed with words from a letter Byron wrote to a friend after her death: "I suppose that Time will do his usual work... - Death has done his."
Claire Clairmont never forgave Byron for Allegra's death and at times doubted that the child had even died.

Notes

1. The Androom Archives
2. Benita Eisler, ''Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame,''1999, p. 593.
3. Eisler, p. 594.
4. Eisler, pp. 640-641
5. Eisler, p. 640
6. Eisler, p. 597
7. Eisler, p. 597
8. Eisler, p. 687
9. Eisler, p. 699
10. Eisler, p. 701

References

★ Eisler, Benita, ''Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame,'' Alfred A. Knopp, 1999, ISBN 0-679-41299-9

External links

★ Photo of Allegra's memorial