Birth of Allegra--Allegra is brought to him at Venice--The Hoppners--
Visit from John Hanson--Newstead Abbey sold--Ennui and depravation
--Affection for Moore--Begins Don Juan--Sir Samuel Romilly--Friends
advise suppression of Don Juan--Byron's confidence in its worth--His
powerful letter

MEANWHILE at Bath, on January 12, 1817, Claire
Clairmont's baby had been born--a daughter, called
before her baptism Alba; but when the ceremony took
place on March 9, Clara Allegra. Both names were reminiscent of
the Genevan days. Alba was the feminine, as it were, of Byron's
petit nom of Albé; Allegra was derived from the Villa Mont
Alègre.

Claire had remained with Shelley and Mary after the return
to England, passing at Bath as Mrs. Clairmont. She was cheer-
ful in the early days of home-coming--reading the Chaworth
Duel trial, and finding the Wicked Lord's behaviour truly Albeian.
"He seemed to have the family complaint of suspicion and
defence where any reasonable man would have taken no offence".
But soon such trouble fell upon the household as stopped all
smiles together. First they heard of Fanny Imlay's suicide--
then of Harriet's. Claire fell into low spirits--wretched, irritable
brooding, and Mary felt again the strain and ennui of such
society. She wrote to Shelley, away on his constant occupation
of house-hunting: "Give me a garden, and absentia Claire, and
I will thank my love for many favours". She was not yet her
Sweet Elf's wife, but on December 30 in the same year she
became so; and in the last week of February 1818, the Shelley
household--now consisting of husband and wife and their little
William, with Claire and her Alba--moved to Albion House,
Marlow. Claire resumed the style of Miss Clairmont, the baby
passing as the child of a friend, Mrs. Auburn, who lived in London,
and had sent her to the country for her health. But there was
little hope of this fiction's gaining credence, for Claire (as she
wrote to Byron in 1820) nursed Allegra day and night during
the first year of her infancy.

-309-