Allegra

"I suppose that Time will do his usual work
— Death has done his."


On this day in 1822 Byron's five-year-old daughter, Allegra, died in Italy. She was the offspring of a brief relationship with Claire Claremont, stepsister to Mary Shelley. The above quotation comes from an April 23rd letter to Shelley, in which Byron expresses his hope that time will heal his grief.
In another letter, Byron expressed his desire that Allegra be buried at St. Mary's Church, Harrow — Byron had often wandered in the churchyard when a student at Harrow School— with a commemorative tablet inscribed, "I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me" (2d Samuel, xii. 23). Byron's reputation and Allegra's parentage caused church authorities to deny the tablet, though an unmarked grave was allowed. When Byron died (almost to the day, four years later — April 19, 1826), he requested burial at St. Mary's, but this was denied. In 1980, a memorial plaque for Allegra was finally put up in St. Mary's, inscribed with the sentence from Byron's letter to Shelley.