* In 1875, at a chastened Ralph’s request, Mrs De Morgan summarised her views for him in a lengthy document. Like Edward Noel (who passed the startling information on to Ralph during the lunch on 18 March 1869), Mrs De Morgan had heard from Lady Byron that she herself had inadvertently discovered the poet and Mrs Leigh in an undeniably compromising situation very late on in the marriage. That disquieting incident had increased Lady Byron’s eagerness to remove her baby daughter from Piccadilly Terrace.
* Mrs Follen had also helped Harriet Martineau with her article about Lady Byron, back in 1860, negotiating a payment by Mr Fields at The Atlantic Monthly of $2 a page. (Martineau Letters, CRL, University of Birmingham.)
* On 15 February 1886, one Henry Carlisle begged Lady Dorchester to return the letters that she had loaned to Abraham Hayward, of which Hayward ‘would gladly be rid’, as the letters were now causing ‘trouble’ from Lord Wentworth. The mystery of why Lady Dorchester’s father, Lord Broughton (formerly Sir John Cam Hobhouse), ever came into possession of the Byron–Melbourne correspondence remains unsolved. (Lovelace Byron Papers).
* Byron had to wait until 1969 to be granted his place in the abbey.
† John Paget created this celestial image for Blackwood’s (January 1870).
* Madame de Boissy’s uninhibitedly malevolent letters about both Lady Byron and Mrs Stowe were to Madame Emma Fagnani (whose husband, Giuseppe, she had commissioned to paint twinned portraits of the late Lord Byron and herself). They are great fun to read and are in the Byron papers held at HRC, Box 7.15.
* The house overlooks the Chelsea Physic Garden. Building work had been supervised in Ralph’s absence by the avuncular Augustus Byron, one of Lord Wentworth’s staunchest allies.
* As later with Astarte (privately published for Ralph Lovelace in 1905), Leslie Stephen’s advice to Ralph leaned always towards the vindication of Augusta Leigh. It was Stephen, in both cases, who persuaded Ralph to omit the most self-incriminating and confessional of Mrs Leigh’s letters to Lady Byron and Mrs Villiers.
* Relations between Ralph and his father had not been improved by William Lovelace’s demand in 1867 for £80,000 to renounce his technical ownership of Lady Byron’s Wentworth estates. They had worsened when he refused to allow his son to inhabit either Ashley Combe or Ockham during his own lifetime. By 1893, Ockham, rented out to Lady Norbury for almost two decades after Dr Lushington’s death, had fallen into terrible disrepair. Ralph and his wife would spend a fortune, and many years, restoring Ralph’s beloved childhood home to habitable use. (Ashley proved to have been only a little less neglected.) Meanwhile, the couple remained at their comfortably modern home in Chelsea.
* ‘Despotic’ was a word much used of Lady Byron by her later detractors, including Mrs Langley Moore. It had first appeared in an 1888 letter, in which the elderly Anna Jones remarked to Ralph that Lady Byron was ‘despotic’ about the accuracy with which her own words should be reported to future generations. That description was one that resonated with the 49-year-old recipient, as he began to reflect upon his grandmother’s firm supervision during his early life.
† Henry James had become a firm friend of both Ralph and Mary Lovelace. In 1909, he and John Buchan (whose wife was Mary Lovelace’s niece) would be asked around to Wentworth House by Ralph’s widow, in order to attest the value of certain letters due to be deposited at the British Museum. Buchan, shocked by what he read, wrote in his later memoir of the ‘ancient indecency’ at which his cooler colleague (who had of course seen most of the ‘incest’ letters already) had apparently turned not a hair.
* In 1972, the collections were separately placed on loan to the Bodleian Library (as the Lovelace Byron Papers) and to the British Library (as the Wentworth Papers).
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Miss Annabella Milbanke: ‘a fine child’ in her adoring parents’ view.
2. Annabella Milbanke as a muchcourted heiress, and as Byron would have first seen her.
3. Comte d’Orsay seems to have painted little Ada Byron before he met her father at Genoa in 1823. He captures her lively charm.
4. Ada’s beloved Persian cat, Puff, drawn by her mother with an accompanying tribute in verse.
5. Lady Byron commissioned this handsome portrait of Ada in the year of her marriage. Ada disliked both it and the artist.
6. Lord Byron. Annabella’s mother was so delighted by Thomas Phillips’s portrait of her future son-in-law that she purchased it for herself. It was how the 25-year-old author of Childe Harold wished to be seen.
7. George Anson Byron (8th Lord) was Ada’s ‘sweet cousin’. She looked upon George as a brother. He married a Nottinghamshire heiress.
8. Lady Melbourne, here in her splendid prime, was Byron’s most worldly advisor. She was also the mother-in-law of Lady Caroline Lamb and the aunt of Annabella Milbanke.
9. Augusta Leigh, half-sister to Lord Byron.
10. Byron’s ‘Mignonne’, Elizabeth Leigh, better known to us as Medora, the daughter of Augusta.
11. As a young man, Ada Lovelace’s future husband modelled his appearance upon Lord Byron. Like him, William King also travelled to Greece.
12. Lady Hester King, the mother of William, was a cold and unhappy woman. Even Ada Lovelace failed to pierce her armour.
13. Ada was especially fond of her sweet-natured sister-in-law, Hester, Jr.
14. Ada helped to facilitate Hester’s marriage to the kind and devoted Reverend Sir George Crauford.
15. Lord Lovelace’s exuberant creation helped to ruin him. Ada never inhabited her special Mathematical Room in the tower above the moat. The Lovelaces’ daughter nicknamed Horsley Towers ‘Glum Castle’.
16. Charles Babbage was of an age to have been a father figure to Ada. Their relationship was both fiery and playful.
17. The remarkable Mary Somerville furthered Ada’s mathematical education and became a second mother to her. The close connection continued through Ada’s daughter into the next generation.
18. The unbuilt Analytical Engine stood at the heart of Ada Lovelace’s professional friendship with Charles Babbage.
19. Antoine Claudet made a series of daguerreotypes of Ada and her children in the 1840s. Ada was fascinated by this technique of early photography.
20. Lady Byron drew this heartbreaking final image of Ada while helping to watch over her in London.
21. Byron Ockham, Ada and William’s first son, wears his midshipman’s uniform. This is by Claudet, c.1849.
22. Claudet’s daguerreotype of Ada and William’s second son, Ralph (later Lord Wentworth), c.1849.
23. Ada’s clever and long-suffering daughter Annabella (later Anne) married William Scawen Blunt. She is in Eastern dress, beside one of her celebrated Arabian horses.
1. Miss Annabella Milbanke: ‘a fine child’ in her adoring parents’ view.
2. Annabella Milbanke as a muchcourted heiress, and as Byron would have first seen her.
3. Comte d’Orsay seems to have painted little Ada Byron before he met her father at Genoa in 1823. He captures her lively charm.
4. Ada’s beloved Persian cat, Puff, drawn by her mother with an accompanying tribute in verse.
5. Lady Byron commissioned this handsome portrait of Ada in the year of her marriage. Ada disliked both it and the artist.
6. Lord Byron. Annabella’s mother was so delighted by Thomas Phillips’s portrait of her future son-in-law that she purchased it for herself. It was how the 25-year-old author of Childe Harold wished to be seen.
7. George Anson Byron (8th Lord) was Ada’s ‘sweet cousin’. She looked upon George as a brother. He married a Nottinghamshire heiress.
8. Lady Melbourne, here in her splendid prime, was Byron’s most worldly advisor. She was also the mother-in-law of Lady Caroline Lamb and the aunt of Annabella Milbanke.
9. Augusta Leigh, half-sister to Lord Byron.
10. Byron’s ‘Mignonne’, Elizabeth Leigh, better known to us as Medora, the daughter of Augusta.
> 11. As a young man, Ada Lovelace’s future husband modelled his appearance upon Lord Byron. Like him, William King also travelled to Greece.
12. Lady Hester King, the mother of William, was a cold and unhappy woman. Even Ada Lovelace failed to pierce her armour.
13. Ada was especially fond of her sweet-natured sister-in-law, Hester, Jr.
14. Ada helped to facilitate Hester’s marriage to the kind and devoted Reverend Sir George Crauford.
15. Lord Lovelace’s exuberant creation helped to ruin him. Ada never inhabited her special Mathematical Room in the tower above the moat. The Lovelaces’ daughter nicknamed Horsley Towers ‘Glum Castle’.
16. Charles Babbage was of an age to have been a father figure to Ada. Their relationship was both fiery and playful.
17. The remarkable Mary Somerville furthered Ada’s mathematical education and became a second mother to her. The close connection continued through Ada’s daughter into the next generation.
18. The unbuilt Analytical Engine stood at the heart of Ada Lovelace’s professional friendship with Charles Babbage.
19. Antoine Claudet made a series of daguerreotypes of Ada and her children in the 1840s. Ada was fascinated by this technique of early photography.
20. Lady Byron drew this heartbreaking final image of Ada while helping to watch over her in London.
21. Byron Ockham, Ada and William’s first son, wears his midshipman’s uniform. This is by Claudet, c.1849.
22. Claudet’s daguerreotype of Ada and William’s second son, Ralph (later Lord Wentworth), c.1849.
23. Ada’s clever and long-suffering daughter Annabella (later Anne) married William Scawen Blunt. She is in Eastern dress, beside one of her celebrated Arabian horses.
TIMELINE OF EVENTS
9 January 1777
Marriage of Ralph Milbanke and Judith Noel
22 January 1788
Birth of George Gordon Byron
17 May 1792
Birth of Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke
21 February 1805
Birth of William King (later Lord
Lovelace)
1809
Byron publishes English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
5 February 1811
Prince of Wales becomes Prince Regent by law
25 March 1812
Annabella Milbanke meets Byron at Melbourne House, Whitehall
1812–18
Publication of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in four cantos
15 April 1814
Birth of Elizabeth Medora Leigh
2 January 1815
Annabella Milbanke marries Lord Byron at Seaham Hall
10 December 1815
Birth of Augusta Ada Byron
15 January 1816
Lady Byron leaves her husband
25 April 1816
Byron leaves England (for permanent exile)
3 July 1822
Babbage announces his designs for calculating engines to Sir Humphry Davy
19 April 1824
Byron dies at Missolonghi
1826–8
Lady Byron takes Ada on a Continental tour
May 1829
Following an (unrelated) attack of measles, Ada enters a three-year period of semi-paralysis
1831
Michael Faraday demonstrates electromagnetic induction
1833
Ada endangers her reputation with an attempted elopement
5 June 1833
Ada first visits Babbage’s house with her mother and sees a portion of the Difference Engine
1834
Ada begins mathematics lessons with Mary Somerville and attends a lecture about Difference Engine 2 and the need for funding
February 1835
Ada suffers a medical breakdown
April 1835
Lord Melbourne becomes prime minister under King William IV
8 July 1835
Ada marries Lord King at Fordhook, Ealing
12 May 1836
Birth of Byron Noel, later Viscount Ockham
22 September 1837
Birth of Anne Isabella King
30 June 1838
William King is created 1st Earl of Lovelace
2 July 1839
Birth of Ralph Gordon Noel King
June 1840
Ada starts to study mathematics with Augustus De Morgan
11 August 1840
Lord Lovelace is appointed Lord Lieutenant of Surrey
August 1840
Charles Babbage goes to Turin and presents plans for the unbuilt Analytical Engine at a scientific symposium
Autumn 1841
Ada suffers a further medical breakdown
October 1842
Luigi F. Menabrea publishes his account of the Analytical Engine in French (based upon diagrams shown by Babbage in Turin in 1840)
August 1843
Ada’s translation of Menabrea’s paper is published, with additional ‘Notes’ by herself as AAL
January 1844
Ada has another breakdown
November 1844
Ada meets John Crosse at Fyne Court in Somerset.
In London, she corresponds with Michael Faraday, meets with Charles Wheatstone and discusses the possibility of becoming Prince Albert’s scientific advisor
28 August 1849
Death of Elizabeth Medora Leigh in Aveyron, France
late August 1849
Byron Ockham goes to sea for three years
Autumn 1850
The Lovelaces visit Newstead Abbey and Ada’s interest in betting finds an outlet at Doncaster racecourse
January 1851 – May 1852
Ada leads a private gambling ring and suffers serious losses
June 1851
Following severe haemorrhages, Ada’s doctors diagnose cervical cancer
12 October 1851
Death in London of Augusta Leigh
27 November 1852
Ada dies at 6 Great Cumberland Place
16 May 1860
Lady Byron dies at St George’s Terrace, Primrose Hill
1 September 1862
Death in Wimbledon of Viscount Ockham
February 1869
The first – and cool – response in print in the UK to Teresa Guiccioli’s long book about Byron, in which Lady Byron is denigrated
July 1869
John Paget, in Blackwood’s, supports the Guiccioli account and follows her lead in attacking Lady Byron
Summer 1869
Ralph Wentworth marries Fanny Heriot; Anne King-Noel marries Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
September 1869
Publication in the UK and the US of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s magazine article, ‘True Story’, in which she defends Lady Byron against the previous attacks
January 1870
Publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s expanded, rethought defence of Lady Byron, as Lady Byron Vindicated
18 October 1871
Death of Charles Babbage
1888
Leslie Stephen publishes a DNB essay on Byron, in which Lady Byron is again denigrated
1889
Ralph Wentworth privately publishes Lady Noel Byron and the Leighs
29 December 1893
Death of William Lovelace; Ralph Wentworth becomes 2nd Earl of Lovelace
1905
Publication of Astarte, Ralph Lovelace’s assessment of the Byron separation and defence of his grandmother against previous attacks upon her reputation
1906
Death of Ralph Lovelace at Ockham Park
1917
Death of Ralph’s sister, Lady Anne Blunt, Viscountess Wentworth, following the death of his daughter, Ada Mary (Molly) in the same year
1920
Publication of Astarte, edited by Mary, Countess of Lovelace, with additional material
NOTE ON ADA’S HEALTH
Nobody has yet succeeded in identifying just what it was that Ada Lovelace suffered from.
Although her early and severe attack of semi-paralysis followed upon measles, it is very rare indeed for measles to cause such a drastic collapse of health. (The last reported case was in 1964.) The cause of Ada’s death is not in doubt, but what are we to make of the continual breakdowns in health, the violent mood swings, the desire for solitude (expressed to Andrew Crosse before her first visit to his Somerset home) when one of these attacks afflicted her and – most perplexingly of all, perhaps – the ‘mad eyes’ referred to by Charles Locock and the swollen facial features which remained in evidence, as Ada wrote in one apologetic letter, to Agnes and Woronzow Greig, for several days?
A thyroid condition is not applicable, since this would have been accompanied by an increase in weight and Ada – as her images clearly show – became increasingly emaciated. (Anorexia cannot be ruled out; Ada’s father dieted ferociously to keep himself trim and Ada’s husband made it clear that he detested overweight people.)
In Byron's Wake Page 50
