Jane ‘Claire’ Clairmont developed a close relationship with her stepsister Mary. When Mary, not yet 17, eloped in 1814 with her father’s close friend, the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Claire went too, and traveled with them through France and Europe. When lack of money forced the trio to return to England, the Godwins failed to persuade Claire to come home. Shelley took on the responsibility for supporting and providing for Claire, which he did faithfully until his death. Two years after her return to England, a bored and infatuated Claire threw herself into a liaison with the poet Lord Byron. That summer of 1816, again travelling with the Shelleys (who needed her skill with languages), she persuaded them to meet up with Byron in Switzerland. They spent the summer near Geneva in a rented house next to Byron and his physician John Polidori. During this time, Mary Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein.

Claire conceived a child to Byron, and returned to England to give birth in January 1817 to a daughter she called Alba, later baptised Clara Allegra. (The Godwins were kept in ignorance of the birth, and apparently were never to know of Claire's child). Byron (now living in Venice) rejected any further relationship with Claire, but demanded custody of his child.

Memorial plaque to Allegra, Claire's daughter by Byron,

at St. Mary's Church, Harrow-on-the-Hill School

(Photograh 2011, courtesy of Sven)

When Claire and the Shelleys went to Italy in the spring of 1818, Byron took Allegra into his care, only to place her soon after in a convent in Bagnacavallo, Italy. Claire was allowed only a few visits to her dearly loved daughter, and was utterly opposed to her placement away from a parent's care. When Allegra died of a fever in 1822 (aged 5 years), Claire blamed Byron totally for their child's death and never ceased to hate him thereafter.

Claire and the Shelleys lived in Italy from 1818 until Shelley's death in 1822. While in Pisa in 1820, Claire and Mary became close to Lady Margaret Mount Cashel, who lived there under the name 'Mrs Mason' with her lover, George Tighe, and their two daughters. Lady Mount Cashel had been a pupil and friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, and took a maternal interest in the two young women. (She was also a writer for Mrs Godwin's children's publishing house). After Percy Shelley's death by drowning in 1822, Mary Shelley returned to England.

Claire Clairmont's personal characteristics were well documented. She was lively and pretty, with curling black hair, a lovely complexion and very bright black eyes. She was imaginative, emotional and dramatic in her moods and impulses, with a lively sense of humour. Her singing voice was greatly admired, not least by Shelley and Byron, and she became an accomplished pianist. She was regarded as a vivacious, intelligent and attractive companion.

However, at the age of 24, Claire Clairmont, alone and virtually penniless, went to Vienna to live with her brother Charles and seek a livelihood as a governess. After a difficult year she then went to Russia, where she worked as a governess, and later lived in Dresden, employed as a companion-housekeeper. Claire was fully conscious of the tenuousness of the means of her survival should her reputation be less than irreproachable. She apparently was resigned to eschewing romantic entanglements, even rejecting repeated proposals of marriage from the poet Edward John Trelawny, although she remained his friend to end of her life. After a short period in Naples in 1831, about which little is known, Claire moved on to Pisa to live with 'Mr and Mrs Mason' and their two daughters, while she worked as a non-resident governess. She went with her employers to Paris in 1836 then on to England in 1837, where she helped to care for her widowed mother in her last years.