“The churchwardens have been urged to issue their prohibition by several leading and influential persons, laymen, in the parish.  You are aware that as to ex-parishioners the consent of the churchwardens is no less necessary than my own; and that therefore the enclosed prohibition is decisive as to the putting up of the monument.  You will oblige me by making known to Lord Byron the precise circumstances of the case.

I am, your obedient Servant, J.W.  CUNNINGHAM.

The prohibition was as follows: 

HARROW, September 17, 1822.

Honored Sir,

I object on behalf of the parish to admit the tablet of Lord Byron’s child into the church.

JAMES WINKLEY, Churchwarden.

The remains of Allegra, after long delay, were at length buried in the church, just under the present door mat, over which the congregation enter the church; but no memorial tablet or other record of her appears on the walls of Harrow Church.

CHAPTER XVI

BYRON’S DEATH AND THE DESTRUCTION OF HIS MEMOIRS

No attempt has here been made to present a strictly chronological record of Mr. Murray’s life; we have sought only so to group his correspondence as to lay before our readers the various episodes which go to form the business life of a publisher.  In pursuance of this plan we now proceed to narrate the closing incidents of his friendship with Lord Byron, reserving to subsequent chapters the various other transactions in which he was engaged.

During the later months of Byron’s residence in Italy this friendship had suffered some interruption, due in part perhaps to questions which had arisen out of the publication of “Don Juan,” and in part to the interference of the Hunts.  With the activity aroused by his expedition to Greece, Byron’s better nature reasserted itself, and his last letter to his publisher, though already printed in Moore’s Life, cannot be omitted from these pages: 

Lord Byron to John Murray.

MISSOLONGHI, February 25, 1824.

I have heard from Mr. Douglas Kinnaird that you state “a report of a satire on Mr. Gifford having arrived from Italy, said to be written by me! but that you do not believe it.”  I dare say you do not, nor any body else, I should think.  Whoever asserts that I am the author or abettor of anything of the kind on Gifford lies in his throat.  I always regarded him as my literary father, and myself as his prodigal son; if any such composition exists, it is none of mine. You know as well as anybody upon whom I have or have not written; and you also know whether they do or did not deserve that same.  And so much for such matters.  You will perhaps be anxious to hear some news from this part of Greece (which is the most liable to invasion); but you will hear enough through public and private channels.  I will, however, give you the events of a week, mingling my own private peculiar with the public; for we are here jumbled a little together at present.