Part 13
As an example of the purely exasperating, this letter has few peers in recorded correspondence. “At my own expense,” meant at Shelley’s expense; and Byron, loving or unloving, had never sought to shirk his paternal responsibilities. The alluring prospect of freedom from all concern offered little temptation to a father who had his child’s future very seriously at heart. Miss Clairmont was surrounded at this time by a group of eminently foolish counsellors, the most prominent of whom were Lady Mountcashell, Mr. Tighe, and Miss Elizabeth Parker. Lady Mountcashell had a venerable husband in England, but preferred living in Italy with Mr. Tighe. There she employed her leisure in writing a book upon the training of children,--a work which her friends highly esteemed, and which they held to be an ample compensation to society for any irregularities in her own life. The couple were known as Mr. and Mrs. Mason. Miss Parker was an orphan girl, sent from England by Mrs. Godwin to be a companion to Lady Mountcashell, and profit by her example. These people kept alive in Claire’s heart the flame of resentment and unrest. Mr. Tighe dwelt mournfully upon the austerity, as well as upon the degradation of convent life, until the mother’s grief grew so excessive that in August, 1821, the long-suffering Shelley made a pilgrimage to Ravenna and to Bagnacavallo, to see how Allegra was placed, and to assure himself of her health and happiness. His charming letter--too long to be quoted in full--gives us the prettiest imaginable picture of a little school-girl, not yet five years old.
“I went the other day to see Allegra at her convent, and stayed with her about three hours. She is grown tall and slight for her age, and her face is somewhat altered. She yet retains the beauty of her deep blue eyes and of her mouth; but she has a contemplative seriousness, which, mixed with her excessive vivacity which has not yet deserted her, has a very peculiar effect in a child. She is under strict discipline, as may be observed from the immediate obedience she accords to the will of her attendants. This seems contrary to her nature; but I do not think it has been obtained at the expense of much severity. Her hair, scarcely darker than it was, is beautifully profuse, and hangs in large curls on her neck. She was prettily dressed in white muslin, and an apron of black silk, with trousers. Her light and airy figure and her graceful motions were a striking contrast to the other children there. She seemed a thing of a finer and a higher order. At first she was very shy; but after a little caressing, and especially after I had given her a gold chain which I had bought for her at Ravenna, she grew more familiar, and led me all over the garden, and all over the convent, running and skipping so fast that I could hardly keep up with her. She showed me her little bed, and the chair where she sat at dinner, and the _carozzina_ in which she and her favourite companions drew each other along a walk in the garden. I had brought her a basket of sweetmeats, and, before eating any of them, she gave her friends and each of the nuns a portion. This is not like the old Allegra.... Her intellect is not much cultivated. She knows certain _orazioni_ by heart, and talks and dreams of _Paradiso_ and all sorts of things, and has a prodigious list of saints, and is always talking of the Bambino. This will do her no harm; but the idea of bringing up so sweet a creature in the midst of such trash ‘till sixteen.”
Shelley’s content with Allegra’s situation (the little tempest-tossed bark had at last sailed into quiet waters) failed to bring comfort to Claire. The convent walls rose--a hopeless barrier--between mother and child; and the finality of the separation weighed cruelly upon her spirits. One of her most bitter grievances was the fear that her daughter was being educated with the children of tradespeople,--an unfounded alarm, as we see from the list compiled by Signor Biondi of the little _marchesas_ and _contessas_ who were Allegra’s playmates. Another, and a reasonable anxiety, came with the approach of winter. Miss Clairmont then thinks less about the ignorance and immorality of Italian women, and more about the undoubted cold of Italian convents. She is afraid, and naturally afraid, that her child is not warm enough. There is one piteous letter in which she says that she cannot look at a glowing fire without a sorrowful remembrance of her little daughter in the chilly convent halls.
All these sources of disquietude were strengthened the following year by a new and unreasoning terror. Miss Clairmont appears to have actually persuaded herself that Lord Byron meant to leave Allegra at Bagnacavallo, in the event of his own departure from Italy. We know now from his letters that it was his settled purpose to take her with him, wherever he went. Even when he meditated--briefly--an exile to South America, the child was to accompany his flight. But his persistent silence, his maddening refusal to answer Claire’s appeals or remonstrances, left her in painful ignorance, and a prey to consuming fears. She conceived the mad design of stealing Allegra from the convent,--a scheme which was warmly supported by those discreet monitors, Lady Mountcashell and Mr. Tighe. Together they discussed ways and means. Mr. Tighe was of the opinion that the time had come for extreme measures; and the ardent Miss Parker assured Miss Clairmont that, were _she_ Allegra’s mother, she would not hesitate to stab Lord Byron to the heart, and so free his unhappy offspring from captivity.
In the midst of this melodramatic turmoil we hear Mrs. Shelley’s voice, pleading vainly for patience and common sense. She points out in an earnest letter to Claire that Lady Noel’s death will probably compel Byron to go to England, and may even lead to a reconciliation with his wife. In that event he will be more willing to give back Allegra to her mother; and for the present, there is no cause for apprehension. “Your anxiety about the child’s health,” she writes reassuringly, “is to a great extent unfounded. You ought to know, and any one will tell you, that the towns of Romagna, situated where Bagnacavallo is, enjoy the best air in Italy. Imola and the neighbouring _paese_ are famous. Bagnacavallo especially, being fifteen miles from the sea, and situated on an eminence, is peculiarly salutary. Considering the affair reasonably, Allegra is well taken care of there. She is in good health, and in all probability will continue so.”
One fact she strives to make clear. Her husband has no money for the furtherance of any plots that Miss Clairmont and Mr. Tighe may devise. On this score, Shelley himself is equally explicit. He had never wanted Allegra to go to her father, and he cannot resist the temptation of saying, “I told you so,” though he says it with grave kindness. But he was even less willing that, having been given up, she should be stolen back again. His letter of remonstrance proves both the anxiety he felt, and his sense of shame at the part he was expected to play.
MY DEAR CLARE,--I know not what to think of the state of your mind, nor what to fear for you. Your plan about Allegra seems to me, in its present form, pregnant with irremediable infamy to all the actors in it except yourself;--in any form wherein _I_ must actively coöperate, with inevitable destruction. _I could not_ refuse Lord Byron’s challenge; though that, however to be deprecated, would be the least in the series of mischiefs consequent upon my intervention in such a plan. I am shocked at the thoughtless violence of your designs, and I wish to put my sense of their madness in the strongest light. I may console myself, however, with the reflection that the attempt even is impossible, as I have no money. So far from being ready to lend me three or four hundred pounds, Horace Smith has lately declined to advance six or seven napoleons for a musical instrument which I wished to buy for Jane Williams in Paris. Nor have I any other friends to whom I could apply.
There was no need of heroics on the one side, nor of apprehension on the other. While Miss Clairmont was fretting and scheming in Florence, fever was scourging the Romagna, so seldom visited by infection, and the little English-born girl fell one of its earliest victims. Allegra died at her convent school in the spring of 1822. Byron admitted that death was kind. “Her position in the world would scarcely have allowed her to be happy,” he said, pitying remorsefully the “sinless child of sin,” so harshly handicapped in life. But he felt his loss, and bitterly, though silently, mourned it. The Countess Guiccioli was with him when the tidings came. In her eyes, he had always been a fond and solicitous father; yet the violence of his distress amazed and frightened her. He sent her away, and faced his grief, and his remorse--if he felt remorse--alone. The next day, when she sought him, he said very simply, “It is God’s will. She is more fortunate than we are;” and never spoke of the child again. “From that time,” she adds, “he became more anxious about his daughter Ada;--so much so as to disquiet himself when the usual accounts sent him were for a post or two delayed.”
Byron’s letters to Shelley, to Murray, and to Scott, bear witness to the sincerity of his grief, and also to his sense of compunction. He was still ready to defend his conduct; but to Shelley, at least, he admitted: “It is a moment when we are apt to think that, if this or that had been done, such an event might have been prevented.” Indeed, of the four actors so deeply concerned in this brief tragedy of life, Shelley alone could hold himself free from blame. From first to last he had been generous, reasonable, and kind. It was his painful part to comfort Miss Clairmont, to restrain her frenzy of anger and wretchedness, to make what shadow of peace he could between the parents of the dead child. In all this he endured more than his share of worry and vexation. Two weeks after Allegra’s death, he wrote to Lord Byron:
“I have succeeded in dissuading Clare from the melancholy design of visiting the coffin at Leghorn, much to the profit of my own shattered health and spirits, which would have suffered greatly in accompanying her on such a journey. She is much better. She has, indeed, altogether suffered in a manner less terrible than I expected, after the first shock, during which, of course, she wrote the letter you enclose. I had no idea that her letter was written in that temper; and I think I need not assure you that, whatever mine or Mary’s ideas might have been respecting the system of education you intended to adopt, we sympathize too much in your loss, and appreciate too well your feelings, to have allowed such a letter to be sent to you, had we suspected its contents.”
A dead grief is easier to bear than a live trouble. By early summer, Shelley was able to report Miss Clairmont as once more “talkative and vivacious.” It was he who befriended her to the end, and who bequeathed her a large share of his estate. It was he who saw--or deemed he saw--the image of Allegra rise smiling and beckoning from the sea.
According to the Countess Guiccioli, Byron bore the “profound sorrow” occasioned by his little daughter’s death “with all the fortitude belonging to his great soul.” In reality his sense of loss was tempered by relief. Allegra’s future had always been to him a subject of anxiety, and it was not without an emotion of joy that he realized the child’s escape from a world which he had found bad, and which he had done little to make better. Two days after she died, he wrote to Murray: “You will regret to hear that I have received intelligence of the death of my daughter, Allegra, of a fever, in the convent of Bagnacavallo, where she was placed for the last year to commence her education. It is a heavy blow for many reasons, but must be borne,--with time.”
A fortnight later he wrote to Scott: “I have just lost my natural daughter, Allegra, by a fever. The only consolation, save time, is the reflection that she is either at rest or happy; for her few years (only five) prevented her from having incurred any sin, except what we inherit from Adam.
“‘Whom the gods love die young.’”
In a third letter, published by Mr. Prothero, Byron repeats these sentiments with even greater emphasis, and with a keener appreciation of their value. “Death has done his work, and I am resigned.... Even at my age I have become so much worn and harassed by the trials of the world, that I cannot refrain from looking upon that early rest which is at times granted to the young, as a blessing. There is a purity and holiness in the apotheosis of those who leave us in their brightness and their beauty, which instinctively lead us to a persuasion of their beatitude.”
It was the irony of fate that, after being an innocent object of contention all her life, Allegra should, even in death, have been made the theme of an angry and bitter dispute. Her body was sent to England, and Byron begged Murray to make all the necessary arrangements for her burial. His directions were exceedingly minute. He indicated the precise spot in Harrow Church where he wished the child interred, and he wrote the inscription to be engraved upon her tablet.
IN MEMORY OF ALLEGRA, DAUGHTER OF G. G. LORD BYRON, WHO DIED AT BAGNACAVALLO, IN ITALY, APRIL 20TH, 1822, AGED FIVE YEARS AND THREE MONTHS.
I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.
2 SAMUEL, xii. 23.
The funeral he desired to be “as private as is consistent with decency;” and he expressed a hope that his friend, the Rev. Henry Drury, would read the church service.
Murray found himself beset by unexpected difficulties. The vicar of Harrow, the Rev. J. W. Cunningham, objected strenuously to the erection of Allegra’s tablet, and stated his objections at length;--not to Lord Byron (which was prudent), but to the unhappy publisher, who, all his life, had everybody’s business to attend to. Mr. Cunningham declared that the proposed inscription “would be felt by every man of refined taste, to say nothing of sound morals, to be an offence against taste and propriety.” He explained cautiously that, as he did not dare to say this to Byron, he expected Murray to do so. “My correspondence with his Lordship has been so small that I can scarcely venture myself to urge these objections. You, perhaps, will feel no such scruple. I have seen no person who did not concur in the propriety of stating them. I would intreat, however, that, should you think it right to introduce my name into any statement made to Lord Byron” (as if it could well have been left out), “you will not do so without assuring him of my unwillingness to oppose the smallest obstacle to his wishes, or give the slightest pain to his mind. The injury which, in my judgment, he is from day to day inflicting upon society is no justification for measures of retaliation and unkindness.”
Even the expansive generosity of this last sentiment failed to soften Byron’s wrath, when the vicar’s scruples were communicated to him. He anathematized the reverend gentleman in language too vigorous for repetition, and he demanded of Murray, “what was the matter with the inscription,”--apparently under the impression that he had mistaken his dates, or misquoted his text. His anger deepened into fury when he was subsequently informed that Allegra’s interment in Harrow Church was held to be a deliberate insult to Lady Byron, who occasionally attended the services there. He wrote passionately that of his wife’s church-goings he knew nothing; but that, had he known, no power would have induced him to bury his poor infant where her foot might tread upon its grave. Meanwhile, Mr. Cunningham had marshalled his church-wardens, who obediently withheld their consent to the erection of the tablet; so that matter was settled forever. Two years later, Dr. Ireland, Dean of Westminster, refused to permit Lord Byron’s body to be buried in Westminster Abbey. Even Thorwaldsen’s statue of the poet, now in Trinity College, Cambridge, was rejected by this conscientious dignitary. “I do indeed greatly wish for a figure by Thorwaldsen here,” he wrote piously to Murray; “but no taste ought to be indulged to the prejudice of a duty.” The statue lay unheeded for months in a shed on the Thames wharf, and was finally transferred to the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. Comment is superfluous. Byron was denied a grave in Westminster Abbey; but Gifford, through Dr. Ireland’s especial insistence, was buried within its walls.
Allegra lies in Harrow Church, with no tablet to mark her resting-place, or to preserve her memory. Visitors searching sentimentally for “Byron’s tomb,”--by which they mean a stone in the churchyard, “on the brow of the hill, looking towards Windsor,” where, as a boy, he was wont to sit and dream for hours,--seldom know the spot where his little daughter sleeps.
The Riverside Press
_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A._
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.