Ada Lovelace, the kick-ass mathematician often called the first computer programmer, was also the daughter of one of the most polarizing figures of the nineteenth century—the dashing, scandalous Lord Byron. But Lovelace wasn’t Byron’s only daughter, and the story of her half-sister is shocking indeed.
Lovelace was Byron’s only child born in wedlock, and Byron’s marriage to her mother was laden with drama. Byron wasn’t exactly husband material—he was reckless, desperate for money to discharge his extravagant debts, and in love with his own half-sister. His behavior alarmed his wife so much that she had him assessed for insanity. Though separation was scandalous indeed in that era, her parents helped her move away and reach a private settlement with Byron.
Byron fled to Europe, but not before he had an affair with another woman. Claire Clairmont was the young half-sister of Mary Shelley, whose elopement and open affair with the other Romantic wild child of his day, Percy Bysshe Shelley, had scandalized London. When the family fell on financial hard times, the bored Claire contacted Byron in search of attention. He initially rejected her advances, but finally gave in.
When Byron headed to Italy, Claire followed along with Mary and Percy Shelley. Though Byron was unenthused about his admirer, he was excited about Percy, and the two began an impassioned friendship. The families lived near one another in Switzerland, and eventually it became clear that Claire was pregnant with Byron’s child. Byron was not amused.
“You know—& I believe saw once that odd-headed girl—who introduced herself to me shortly before I left England,” wrote Byron to a friend. “But you do not know—that I found her with Shelley and her sister at Geneva—I never loved her nor pretended to love her—but a man is a man—& if a girl of eighteen comes prancing to you at all hours of the night—there is but one way—the suite of all this is that she was with child–& returned to England to assist in peopling that desolate island…”
When Claire returned to England unmarried and pregnant, she had to move to the small town of Bath to avoid scandal. She gave birth to a daughter, Alba, on January 12, 1817. Although Byron didn’t want the child, he had no qualms about meddling in her life. He hated the name Alba, which was Claire’s nickname for him, and insisted on calling her Allegra instead. Percy Shelley wrote to Byron and told him that she was creating problems for the family, since outsiders assumed she was the product of an affair between Claire and her brother-in-law. Byron finally told Claire he was taking custody of his daughter. Unable to refuse his parental rights and worried about the child’s financial future, Claire had no choice but to send Alba to Italy.
But though Byron had fought Claire for custody of his daughter, he neglected her. Allegra, as she was now called, was shunted off to friends, family members, and eventually an Italian convent, where she died at just five years of age. Her half-sister would go on to inherit her father’s gambling problem and his brilliance, but who knows what Alba would have achieved had she lived?
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