250TH ANNIVERSARY
Lord George Byron
Letter dated May 4, 1822 to Sir Walter Scott
(1822)
"Whom the gods love die young," Lord Byron wrote to Sir Walter Scott about the death of his five-year old natural daughter, Allegra. The result of a brief, unhappy liaison with Clare Clairmont, Allegra was living at the Capuchin convent of Bagnacavallo in Italy.
Clare had given up her infant daughter to her former lover, hoping Allegra would enjoy a life of privilege. "My bastard came three days ago - very like - healthy - noisy & capricious," Byron reported to a friend when the eighteen-month old baby arrived in Venice. Two and a half years later, with the advice of his mistress, the Countess Teresa Guiccioli, herself convent-educated, Byron entrusted "Allegrina" to the nuns at Bagnacavallo. During her thirteen-month stay there, Byron never visited her.
Allegra, who suffered from recurrent bouts of fever in the low-lying marsh town, died on April 19, 1822. Byron talked very little about his child. Of her death, he wrote, "We are apt to think that, if this or that had been done, such event might have been prevented .... I suppose that Time will do his usual work - Death has done his."
The rest of Byron's letter is dedicated to a picaresque account of an imbroglio between members of his entourage and an Italian dragoon.
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