The Monsters (39 page)

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, however 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,

I
n Memory of

Allegra

daughter of G. G. Lord Byron,

who died at Bagnacavallo,

in
I
taly, April
20
th,
1822
.

aged five years and three months

“
I
shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.”

—
2
nd 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 curse was now to claim another.

That time is dead for ever, child!

Drowned, frozen, dead for ever!

We look on the past,

And stare aghast

At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast,

Of hopes which thou and
I
beguiled

To death on life’s dark river.

—“Lines,” Percy Shelley, 1817, published 1824

A
FTER THE BIRTH
of the Shelleys’ latest child, Percy Florence, in November 1819, his father believed that things would return to normal, and
Mary’s depression would disappear. Now she had a baby again to make her happy. But Mary could not so easily forget the deaths
of her children Clara and William, nor Shelley’s open affection for other women. Mary’s husband, like her father, had a blind
spot for her emotional pain and was unable to deal with it except to complain how it affected him.

When she was younger, Mary tried to involve herself in the kind of community marriage her husband envisioned. She went through
the motions with Thomas Jefferson Hogg, but there is no evidence their relationship was ever consummated, or that it was anything
more than playacting on her side. Now she found that she had stronger feelings for order, religion, and domestic happiness.

Percy, of course, had not changed at all. He succeeded in keeping some of his affairs secret from Mary, who nevertheless suspected
what was going on. And after the secret of his mysterious Neapolitan baby, Elena, suddenly emerged—when Byron showed Shelley
the letter from the Hoppners at Ravenna—Percy had turned to Mary to bail him out, asking her to write a letter that exculpated
him from blame.

Which she did. Outwardly, she was determined to remain loyal, to give him no cause to complain that she had ever been less
than faithful. But the ghosts of their dead children hovered over their relationship, making her depressed and, Percy felt,
emotionally cold to him. He himself withdrew into further secrets—furtively writing letters and concealing them from Mary,
publishing a love poem to another woman and attributing it to an author Percy claimed was dead. Shelley reflected on his situation,
“It seems as if the destruction that is consuming me were as an atmosphere which wrapt & infected everything connected with
me.” It was an assessment that proved prophetic.

T
he Shelleys had moved to Pisa in late January 1820, just a day after two-month-old Percy Florence had been baptized in the
city whose name he bore. Pisa attracted them because of its cheaper housing and the presence of good doctors. As ever, Shelley
could not control his restlessness. They had lived in three different Pisan residences by June.

Claire and Mary remained at odds. Claire pointedly wrote in her journal in February, “A bad wife is like Winter in a house.”
Later, she noted, “Heigh-ho, the Clare and the Ma / Find something to fight about every day.” Mary clearly agreed, recording
in her own journal that June 8 was “A better day than most days & good reason for it though Shelley is not well. C[laire]
away at Pugnano.”

Shelley was increasingly annoyed by Mary’s jealousy, forgetting that she had justification for it. He wrote a friend in 1820:

Claire is yet with us, and is reading Latin and Spanish with great resolution. Poor thing! She is an excellent girl. . . .
Mary who, you know, is always wise, has been lately very good. I wish she were as wise now as she will be at 45, or as misfortune
has made me. She would then live on very good terms with Claire. . . . Of course you will not suppose that Mary has seen .
. . this . . . so take no notice of it in any letter intended for her inspection.

Percy was by now in the habit of asking his correspondents to reply to him through contacts in Pisa, in order to keep their
communications secret.

Percy’s anxiety grew when other problems presented themselves. In June, Paolo Foggi tried to blackmail Shelley with the rumor
that Claire was the mother of Elena. Mary may not have known the specifics at this time, but she understood that Percy felt
threatened. They consulted a lawyer to force Paolo to abandon his blackmail attempt.

Godwin, who always made matters worse, was again demanding money. Mary wrote her friends the Gisbornes, then visiting England,
to ask them to “lend” Godwin four hundred pounds, which Shelley promised to repay. They did not. All of these threats and
worries affected Mary’s milk production, and the baby became ill. The problem appeared to be similar to that which had killed
Clara, and Mary became so overwrought that she let Percy censor her mail to avoid any incoming messages that would upset her.
Percy began warning Godwin and their friends not to write letters that would “disturb her quiet.”

Mary got some relief when Claire left for Florence on October 20, 1820. There, she was to stay with a doctor who would introduce
her to Florentine society so that she could obtain a job as a governess. Shelley accompanied Claire on the trip, returning
with his cousin Tom Medwin, who had been living in Europe after military service in India.

Percy instructed Claire to send any letters to him at the Pisa post office, directed to the name Joe James. While she was
in Florence, he in turn wrote her a letter that throws some light on their relationship: “I should be very glad to receive
a confidential letter from you. . . . Do not think that my affection & anxiety for you ever cease, or that I ever love you
less although that love has been & still must be a source of disquietude to me. . . .”

Medwin left an interesting description of Shelley at this time:

It was nearly seven years since we had parted; but I should immediately have recognized him in a crowd. His figure was emaciated,
and somewhat bent; owing to nearsightedness, and his being forced to lean over his books, with his eyes almost touching them,
his hair, still profuse, and curling naturally, was partially interspersed with grey . . . but his appearance was youthful,
and his countenance, whether grave or animated, strikingly intellectual. There was also a freshness and purity in his complexion
that he never lost.

The Shelleys added new members to their circle of friends in Pisa. Mary began taking Greek lessons from an exile, Prince Alexander
Mavrocordatos, who was involved in the Greek independence movement. Shelley dedicated his poem
Hellas
to Mavrocordatos, though he seems to have resented the attention the freedom fighter got from Mary. When the Greek left Italy
to join his compatriots, Shelley wrote to Claire, “He is a great loss to Mary, and
therefore
to me—but not otherwise.”

Shelley was more enthusiastic about Professor Francesco Pacchiani, a local “character” who had left the priesthood to write
poetry and then had become a professor of chemistry at the University of Pisa. Mary wrote of him, “The poor people of Pisa
think him mad and they tell many little stories about him, which make us believe that he is really somewhat odd or, as the
English say, ‘eccentric.’ But he says—They believe me to be mad and it pleases me that they make this mistake; but perhaps
the time will come when they will see that it is the madness of Brutus.” Pacchiani’s logic mirrored Shelley’s opinion of himself,
so it is not difficult to understand why the two got along so well, though Shelley later dropped Pacchiani when the professor
showed a fondness for telling crude stories.