Other pens bear ready witness to Allegra’s temper. Mr. Jeaffreson, who has written a very offensive book about Lord Byron, takes pains to tell us that the poor child was “greedy, passionate, and, in her fifth year, precocious, vain and saucy.” Mr. Hoppner, after the publication of the Countess Guiccioli’s “Recollections,” wrote an agitated letter to the “Athenæum,” assuring an indifferent public that he had no acquaintance with the lady, and that his own respectability was untarnished by any intimacy with the poet, of whose morals he disapproved, and whose companionship he eschewed, save when they rode together,—on Byron’s horses. “Allegra was not by any means an amiable child,” he added sourly, “nor was Mrs. Hoppner nor I particularly fond of her.”
It could hardly have been expected that the daughter of Byron and Claire Clairmont would have been “amiable;” nor can we wonder that Mr. Hoppner, who had a seven-months-old baby of his own, should have failed to wax enthusiastic over another infant. But his warm-hearted wife did love her little charge, and grieved sincerely when the child’s quick temper subsided into listlessness under the fierce Italian heat. “Mon petit brille, et il est toujours gai et sautillant,” she wrote prettily to the Shelleys, after their departure from Venice; “et Allegra, par contre, est devenue tranquille et sérieuse, comme une petite vieille, ce que nous peine beaucoup.”
Byron was frankly grateful to Mrs. Hoppner for her kindness to his daughter; and after he had carried the child to Ravenna, where the colder, purer air brought back her gayety and bloom, he wrote again and again to her former guardians, now thanking them for “a whole treasure of toys” which they had sent, now assuring them that “Allegrina is flourishing like a pomegranate blossom,” and now reiterating the fact which seemed to make most impression upon his mind,—that she was growing prettier and more obstinate every day. He added many little details about her childish ailments, her drives with the Countess Guiccioli, and her popularity in his household. It was to the over-indulgence of his servants, as well as to heredity, that he traced her high temper and imperious will. He consulted Mrs. Hoppner more than once about Allegra’s education; and he poured into her husband’s ears his bitter resentment at Miss Clairmont’s pardonable, but exasperating interference.
For Claire, clever about most things, was an adept in the art of provocation. She wrote him letters calculated to try the patience of a saint, and he retaliated by a cruel and contemptuous silence. In vain Shelley attempted to play the difficult part of peacemaker. “I wonder,” he pleaded, “at your being provoked by what Claire writes, though that she should write what is provoking is very probable. You are conscious of performing your duty to Allegra, and your refusal to allow her to visit Claire at this distance you conceive to be part of that duty. That Claire should have wished to see her is natural. That her disappointment should vex her, and her vexation make her write absurdly, is all in the natural order of things. But, poor thing, she is very unhappy and in bad health, and she ought to be treated with as much indulgence as possible. The weak and the foolish are in this respect the kings,—they can do no wrong.”
Byron was less generous. The weak and the foolish—especially when their weakness and folly took the form of hysteria—irritated him beyond endurance. The penalty that an hysterical woman pays for her self-indulgence is that no one believes in the depth or sincerity of her emotions. Byron had no pity for the pain that Claire was suffering. She was to him simply a young woman who never lost an opportunity to make a scene, and he hated scenes. On one point he was determined. Allegra should never again be sent to her mother, nor to the Shelleys. He had views of his own upon the education of little girls, which by no means corresponded with theirs.
“About Allegra,” he writes to Mr. Hoppner in 1820, “I can only say to Claire that I so totally disapprove of the mode of Children’s treatment in their family, that I should look upon the Child as going into a hospital. Is it not so? Have they reared one? Her health has hitherto been excellent, and her temper not bad. She is sometimes vain and obstinate, but always clean and cheerful; and as, in a year or two, I shall either send her to England, or put her in a Convent for education, these defects will be remedied as far as they can in human nature. But the Child shall not quit me again to perish of Starvation and green fruit, or be taught to believe that there is no Deity. Whenever there is convenience of vicinity and access, her Mother can always have her with her; otherwise no. It was so stipulated from the beginning.”
Five months later, he reiterates these painfully prosaic views. He has taken a house in the country, because the air agrees better with Allegra. He has two maids to attend her. He is doing his best, and he is very angry at Claire’s last batch of letters. “Were it not for the poor little child’s sake,” he writes, “I am almost tempted to send her back to her atheistical mother, but that would be too bad.... If Claire thinks that she shall ever interfere with the child’s morals or education, she mistakes; she never shall. The girl shall be a Christian, and a married woman, if possible.”
On these two points Byron had set his heart. The Countess Guiccioli—kindly creature—assures us that “his dearest paternal care was the religious training to be given to his natural daughter, Allegra;” and while the words of this sweet advocate weigh little in the scale, they are in some degree confirmed by the poet’s conduct and correspondence. When he felt the growing insecurity of his position in Ravenna, he determined to place the child at a convent school twelve miles away, and he explained very clearly and concisely to all whom it might concern his reasons for the step. “Allegra is now four years old complete,” he wrote to Mr. Hoppner in April, 1821; “and as she is quite above the control of the servants, and as a man living without any woman at the head of his house cannot much attend to a nursery, I had no resource but to place her for a time (at a high pension too) in the convent of Bagnacavallo (twelve miles off), where the air is good, and where she will, at least, have her learning advanced, and her morals and religion inculcated. I had also another motive. Things were and are in such a state here, that I have no reason to look upon my own personal safety as insurable, and thought the infant best out of harm’s way for the present.
“It is also fit that I should add that I by no means intended nor intend to give a natural child an English education, because, with the disadvantages of her birth, her after settlement would be doubly difficult. Abroad, with a fair foreign education, and a portion of five or six thousand pounds, she might and may marry very respectably. In England, such a dowry would be a pittance, while elsewhere it is a fortune. It is, besides, my wish that she should be a Roman Catholic, a religion which I look upon as the best, as it is assuredly the oldest, of the various branches of Christianity. I have now explained my notions as to the place where she is. It is the best I could find for the present, but I have no prejudices in its favour.”
Both Mr. and Mrs. Hoppner were strongly in favour of a Swiss, rather than an Italian school; and Byron, who never doubted the sincerity of their affection for his child, lent a ready ear to their suggestions. “If I had but known your ideas about Switzerland before,” he wrote to Mr. Hoppner in May; “I should have adopted them at once. As it is, I shall let Allegra remain in her convent, where she seems healthy and happy, for the present. But I shall feel much obliged if you will inquire, when you are in the cantons, about the usual and better modes of education there for females, and let me know the result of your inquiries. It is some consolation that both Mr. and Mrs. Shelley have written to approve entirely of my placing the child with the nuns for the present. I can refer to my whole conduct, as having spared no trouble, nor kindness, nor expense, since she was sent to me. People may say what they please. I must content myself with not deserving (in this case) that they should speak ill.