The mystery surrounding the fate of the body of Allegra Byron, daughter of Lord Byron and Clare Claremont, who died in an Italian convent aged five, has returned to news presented at the 48th International Byron Conference after the convent’s archives were unearthed. Messolonghi.
The unfortunate Allegrina died on April 20, 1822, in the monastery of Baniacavallo near Ravenna, from an unknown epidemic, possibly typhus or malaria. Lord Byron, bearing in mind that the convent also operated as a boarding school for financial reasons, entrusted his daughter, the product of his troubled relationship with Clare Claremont, to the convent for a good upbringing and education. His choice was fatal.
In a letter to her publisher John Murray two days after Allegra’s death, the poet explained that she wished to send the little girl’s remains to England to be buried in the churchyard of Harrow School (which she attended), “Where I once wished mine.” He noted that the child’s body was “baled and in a pencil” – in a postscript to his letter, perhaps to make his request easier to accept, he added: “You know that it is not allowed for Protestants to bury in holy ground in Catholic countries. .”
According to the official story, the coffin with Allegra’s body went to England, but the vicar of the church refused to allow the scandalous poet’s illegitimate daughter to be buried in a Christian cemetery. The girl was buried in an unknown place near the church. No tombstone indicates where he was laid to rest.
Allegra’s mother did not stop blaming Byron for the decision to send her daughter to a convent. The two were separated, their relationship was almost hostile, and Byron stubbornly refused to allow his daughter to visit. As Daisy Hay tells us in Young Romantics, Claire Claremont later “had a paranoid idea that her daughter had not died in 1822, and that Byron, in a completely dishonorable act, had decided to convince Clay of her death. Goat in a British child’s coffin”.
However, according to research presented at the International Association of Byron Societies conference, Fernando Valverde, associate professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Virginia and former journalist for the Spanish magazine El Pais, said it is highly likely that Allegra is not buried in Britain. He will be buried in the chapel of the Italian monastery.
The archive of the Baniakavalo Monastery remained inaccessible despite repeated attempts by the international Byron community to access it. A few years ago, the monastery ceased to operate and its property was transferred to a Belgian company. In 2020, during the pandemic, which led to the temporary suspension of the evacuation of the buildings, Mr. Valverde, together with his wife, Professor Nieves García Prados, carried out continuous field research in the area, gaining access to the archive and photographing the material covering the years 1820-1822 related to the unfortunate girl.
“Due to the epidemic that killed Allegra, it would have been impossible for the Italian authorities to allow a body to go to England,” says Professor Valverde. “Even in the case of Percy Shelley, who drowned in the Adriatic, his body burned after being pulled from the water. “I don’t see why there should be an exception in the case of Allegra.”
The nun of the Baniakavalo convent says in her letter that the girl never left the convent and that she was buried under the altar in the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes. But on the other hand, the abbess of the monastery, in a letter to the teacher of the boarding school, says that Allegra’s body went from Livorno to England and the ship that took her sank in the Adriatic. F. Valverde notes: “The paradox in this case is that the area of the probable wreck is close to the place where Shelley drowned.”
The revelation of the convent’s documents shows that the mystery surrounding little Allegra’s death is already growing, and is expected to spark a new round of debate in the field of Byronism – and not only that. Did Allegrina’s body go to England and where was she buried? If it never came, who should we believe? The abbess, who claims that the girl’s body was covered by the waters of the Adriatic, or the nun who also shows her grave. And if one of the two women is lying, why?
Allegrina was the fruit of a troubled relationship steeped in bitterness and hatred. Young people, Byron, Shelley, Mary Shelley, Clare, experimented with ideals and choices – free love, shared parenting, liberalism and political radicalism – that put them at odds with the establishment of the time, but also with themselves. With this conflict, they themselves were injured.
As Byron noted of his dead child in a letter to Sir Walter Scott on May 4, 1822, “my only consolation after time is that he is either at rest or happy—a few years (five in all) of life, which they inherited from Adam They kept us from falling into any sin except the sins we received.”
Perhaps the Sisters of St. John the Baptist in a small village outside Ravenna felt the same way. Perhaps they finally decided that the grassy resting place for a creature innocent, unfortunate, but dear to God, was the temple under their shrine