“The place is a country town, in a good air, where there is a large establishment for education, and many children, some of considerable rank, placed in it. As a country town, it is less liable to objections of every kind. It has always appeared to me that the moral defect in Italy does not proceed from a conventual training,—because, to my certain knowledge, girls come out of their convents innocent, even to ignorance, of moral evil;—but to the society into which they are plunged directly on coming out of it. It is like educating an infant on a mountain top, and then taking him to the sea, and throwing him into it, and desiring him to swim.”
Other letters to Mr. Hoppner, to Shelley, and to Moore are equally practical and explicit. Byron writes that he has regular reports of Allegra’s health; that she has mastered her alphabet; that he is having her reared a Catholic, “so that she may have her hands full;” that he meditates increasing her dowry, “if I live, and she is correct in her conduct;” that he thinks a Swiss gentleman might make her a better husband than an Italian. Pamela the virtuous was not more set upon her own “marriage lines” than was Lord Byron upon his daughter’s. Respectability was the golden boon he coveted for the poor little pledge of an illicit and unhappy passion. No one knew better than he how well it is to walk a safe and sheltered road; and no correct church-going father in England was ever more concerned for the decent settlement of his child.
There were others who took a more impassioned view of the situation. Miss Clairmont was spending her Carnival merrily in Florence, when word came that Allegra had been sent to school. It was a blow, says Professor Dowden, “under which she staggered and reeled.” In vain Shelley and his wife represented to her the wisdom of the step. In vain Byron wrote that the air of the Romagna was exceptionally good, and that he paid double fees for his little daughter, to insure her every care and attention. Claire, piteously unreasonable, answered only with frenzied reproaches and appeals. She taunted the poet with his unhappy married life,—which was applying vitriol to a raw wound; she inveighed against the “ignorance and degradation” of convent-reared women, she implored permission to carry her child to England. “I propose,” she wrote, with maddening perversity, “to place her at my own expense in one of the very best English boarding-schools, where, if she is deprived of the happiness of a home and paternal care, she at least would receive an English education, which would enable her, after many years of painful and unprotected childhood, to be benefited by the kindness and affection of her parents’ friends.... By adopting this plan, you will save yourself credit and also the expense; and the anxiety for her safety and well-being need never trouble you. You will become as free as if you had no such tie.”
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.