In Byron's Wake
Page 54
During her autumn at Wimpole Street, she wrote a poem in which God the Father was boldly replaced by a maternal deity: AINB to Elizabeth Siddons, 3 October 1834, HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
His new idea, so she firmly noted, was ‘unsound’: AINB, unpublished diary, 15 December 1834, 17 November 1834, Dep. Lovelace Byron 117, fol. 1.
‘In a few weeks I dare say I shall be quite strong’: AAB to Mary Somerville, 20 February 1835, MSBY, Dep. c. 367, fols. 2–3.
a newly ebullient Ada declared, ‘even better than waltzing’: AAB to Mary Somerville, n.d. April 1835, MSBY, Dep c. 367, fol. 3.
Chapter Thirteen: Ada’s Marriage (1835–40)
‘nothing shall be wanting on my part to you and for you . . . to meet all your wishes will always be my first duty’s pleasure’: The private history of the Lovelaces and Lady Hester has recently been identified within an archive held at Brooklands Museum. Long before William King (Lovelace)’s nephew, Hugh Locke King, built the Brooklands race track, William’s younger brother, Peter Locke King, built a large (and surviving) house close by. This house was where the Locke King archive was stored and – due to a breakdown of relations between the two halves of the family – where it remained, unseen. It was returned to Brooklands from a King family house in South Africa during the 1990s. The papers identified in these notes are from boxes 9 and 10 in the Locke King Papers, Brooklands Museum.
‘I thought to myself how few young men whom one meets at balls would talk with so much feeling about their country church’: AAB to William King from Fordhook, 8 June 1835, Dep. Lovelace Byron 165, fols. 1–39.
‘How I envy your chaperon his ride with you’: William King to AAB, n.d. June 1835, ibid.
‘Now do not be angry with me, because I have only just spoken the truth – neither more nor less’: AAB to William King, 28 June 1835, ibid.
Annabella praised Lord King, not merely as ‘a man of rare worth and superior abilities’: AINB to Harriet Siddons, 9 June 1835, HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
‘Dear little Canary Bird, may the new “cage” be gladdened by your notes’: AINB to AAK, 9 July, 1835, Dep. Lovelace Byron 47.
Chapter Fourteen: An Unconventional Wife (1836–40)
A disappointingly pompous George Ticknor, calling in at Fordhook to inspect Lady Byron’s Ealing school: Anna Eliot Ticknor (ed.), Life, Letters & Journals of George Ticknor, 2 vols. (Houghton Mifflin, 1900), vol. 1, p. 53.
‘for the first time in my life – I may say that I feel without a care on earth . . .’: AINB to Harriet Siddons, 22 July 1835, HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
‘These catastrophes are very frequent in my house, I think I will act being in a rage next time . . .’: AINB to Elizabeth Siddons, [July] 1835, HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
‘I want my Cock at night to keep me warm’: AAK to William King, 8 and 9 October 1835, Dep. 165, fols. 1–39.
‘Ou won’t hurt her I think, will ou?’: AAK to William King, 11 March 1838, Dep. 165, fols. 80–119.
Chatting to Mary Somerville’s attentive son during the 1840s about her sexual life: All of Ada’s extravagant confidences to Woronzow Greig were recorded in his brief private memoir (MSBY, Dep. b. 206, folder MSIF 2–40). Greig had also heard some of the stories from Lady Byron in or before 1835, when he was delegated to transmit the outline of Ada’s escapade to William King. Ada spiced up the details. Sophia De Morgan, writing to Lord Wentworth in 1875, stressed Ada’s delight in shocking her listeners. Greig was a susceptible man.
The result, in the view of a displeased Ada, was that she looked like ‘a crop-eared dog’: AAK to Mary Somerville, 1 November 1835, MSBY Dep. c. 367, folder MSBY-3.
The likeness to Lord Byron was declared by her to be ‘most striking’: AAK to AINB, 29 October 1835, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 111–15.
Writing to their mother, Ada teased that warnings would be sent if either Martha or Mary decided to elope: AAK to Mary Somerville, 10 February 1836, MSBY, Dep. c. 367, folder MSBY-3.
Writing a character portrait of her daughter during the early years of Ada’s marriage: AINB, ‘Portrait’ of Ada, dated 1840 by William Lovelace, but it may have been written much earlier, Dep. Lovelace Byron 118, fols. 86–7.
‘Hester and I are very happy together,’ Ada told William: AAK to William King, 1 August 1836, Dep. Lovelace Byron 165, fols. 40–79.
‘You will however I trust remember that if either at present or at any future time’: AAK to Lady Hester King Sr, 11 June 1837, LKC.
‘No matter . . . The occurrence of last week will of course now be blotted out from the record of events’: AAK to Lady Hester King Sr, 12 February 1838, LKC.
The fault was theirs, she wrote fiercely back to Lady Hester’s brother on 23 June 1846: AAL to Lord Fortescue (Lady Hester King Sr’s brother, formerly Viscount Ebrington), 23 June 1846, LKC.
‘Our school is doing so well, that I am very anxious it should do better’: AAL to AINB, Wednesday [1838], in Betty Toole, Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers [sic] (Strawberry Press, 1992), pp. 104–5. Doubtless altered for readability, Toole’s quotation from Babbage should read ‘The Enchantress of Number’.
‘Ada teaches so that one cannot help learning,’ an admiring friend had exclaimed: AINB, ‘Portrait’ of Ada, Dep. Lovelace Byron 118, fols. 86–7.
Fond personal recollections played a larger part than phrenological diagnosis when Robert described Miss King: R. R. Noel, Notes biographical and phrenological illustrating a collection of casts (of skulls) (published for private circulation, 1883; Senate House Library, UCL).
Her letter, although spiky, stopped just short of a sneer: Hester King Jr to Louisa Noel, 4 August 1839, regarding the Alfred Chalon 1838 portrait. This correspondence is in WP, Add MS 54089.
Little Byron, described by Hester to Robert Noel’s wife as ‘an exceedingly odd boy’: Hester King Jr to Louisa Noel, 14 September 1839, WP, Add MS 54089.
‘Now Ma may go . . . Ma can go downstairs’: AAL to AINB, n.d. 1838–9, see Toole, op. cit., pp. 113–14.
Ada wondered how her mother found the patience to suffer so much tiresome ‘chatteration’: AAL to AINB, n.d. March 1840, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41.
Hester King described Lady Byron to the Noels as a besotted granny: WP, Add MS 54089.
Lady Lovelace finally admitted to her mother that she would never have chosen to bear a child: AAL to AINB, 12 December 1840, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 194–5.
‘to say the truth I do not think Mr H. Fellows knows much about the Trinity or the Unity either’: AAK to AINB, n.d. September 1837, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41.
It was in the same playful tone as in her letters to Fanny that Annabella wrote to Ada from Germany: Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), p. 374.
In June 1837, Ada fired off an opinionated letter to Mrs Somerville: AAL to Mary Somerville, 22 June 1837, MSBY, Dep c. 367, folder MSBY-3.
‘a very bright light a good way farther on’: AAL to Charles Babbage, 16 February 1840, BL, Add MS B37192.
‘I hope you are bearing me in mind’: AAL to Charles Babbage, 16 February 1840, BL, Add MS B37192.
Writing to her absent mother that month: AAL to AINB, 20 October 1840, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 170–4.
Chapter Fifteen: Ambitions and Delusions (1840–1)
‘The discovery of the Analytical Engine is so much in advance of my own country’: Charles Babbage to Angelo Sismondo, in Anthony Hyman, Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer (Princeton University Press, 1982), p.185.
‘Festina lente,’ De Morgan reproved her on 15 September 1840: All Augustus De Morgan’s correspondence with Ada is in box 170 in the Lovelace Byron Papers. I am indebted to Christopher Hollings and Adrian Rice for early use of their transcriptions, now available online, and to Ursula Martin for introducing me to the first papers that have seriously examined Ada’s mathematics. These are now online. The most relevant to De Morgan’s influence
is: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17498430.2017.1325297
‘I work on very slowly,’ Ada sighed to her mother: AAL to AINB, 21 November 1840, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41.
‘I have materially altered my mind on this subject,’ she confessed to her tutor: AAL to Augustus De Morgan, 22 December 1840, see note to p. 224 above, ‘Festina lente’.
‘the importance of not being in a hurry’: AAL to Augustus De Morgan, 10 November 1840, see note to p. 224 above, ‘Festina lente’.
‘The moving force of mathematical invention is not reasoning but imagination’: Robert Perceval Graves, Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton (3 vols., Hodges, Figgis, 1889), vol. 3, p. 219.
‘Imagination is the Discovering faculty’: AAL, ‘Essay on Imagination’, 5 January 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 175, fol. 231.
‘I feel bound to tell you that the power that Lady L[ovelace]’s thinking has always shewn’: Augustus De Morgan to AINB, 21 January 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 67, fol. 9.
‘. . . the less I have habitually to do with children the better’: AAL to AINB, 12 December 1840, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 194–5.
‘His affable, communicative, manly & I may say elegant manners, charm people much’: AAL to Louisa Barwell, 5 January 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 63.
‘You have always been a kind & real & most invaluable friend to me’: AAL to Charles Babbage, 12 January 1841, BL, Add MS B37192.
‘one of the most logical, sober-minded, cool, pieces of composition (I believe) that I ever penned; the result of much accurate, matter-of-fact, reflection & study’: AAL to AINB, 6 February 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fols. 12–16.
‘The services which I am so willing to render are not asked . . . A Right Honourable wall surrounds me’: AINB to Ralph King, 7 September 1855, Dep. Lovelace Byron 61.
And thus, as she argued in a long and earnest letter to Harriet Siddons: AINB to Harriet Siddons, 11 February 1836, HRC, Bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
‘The great thing is not to delay as the people are starving’: The quotations are from David Herbert, Lady Byron and Earl Shilton (Hinckley & District Museum, 1997), pp. 40–1. More detail appears in Harriet Martineau’s unpublished correspondence and notes. These were collected from various fellow reformers in 1860, following Lady Byron’s death (CRL, XHM121–31).
‘So many mothers came that it seemed each child had two Mothers!’: AINB to Harriet Siddons, June–July 1840, HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
Mary Montgomery was willing to view Mrs Leigh as ‘one of the wickedest woman ever born’: Mary Montgomery was quoted in Sophia De Morgan’s long letter of record to Lord Wentworth about his mother and grandmother, 9 April 1875, Dep. Lovelace Byron 187, fols. 62–76.
‘I can believe – alas! that I should confess it – even to you’: Anna Jameson to AINB, 13 December 1840, Dep. Lovelace Byron 75. Mrs Jameson seems to have burnt, as requested, Lady Byron’s description of Augusta Leigh’s misdoings.
‘She [Medora] knows that the throat of my conscience is small’: AINB to Lady Olivia Acheson, in Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), pp. 353–4.
‘I would save you, if it be not too late, from adding the guilt of her death to that of her birth. Leave her in peace!’: AINB to AL, 20 January 1841, WP, Add MS 31037.
‘It well paints your whole principle & character; – at least it does so to me’: AAL to AINB, 11 January 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fols. 8–11.
Chapter Sixteen: A Cuckoo in the Nest (1841–3)
‘But if you knew one half the harum-scarum extraordinary things I do’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 31 December 1841, MSBY, Dep. c. 367, MSBY-9.
Ada described the following year as ‘a frightful crisis in my existence’: AAL to WL, n.d. April 1842, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166, fols. 1–49. Much of the letter was devoted to explaining Ada’s newly discovered vocation (‘poetry, in conjunction with musical composition, must be my destiny’), while warning her husband not to impede it.
‘I should tell you that I did not suspect the daughter as being the result of it [the incest]’: AAL to AINB, 3 March 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fols. 28–30. The eight-day gap between this letter and Annabella’s revelation of incest on 23 February suggests that Ada was answering a second revelation, concerning Medora’s parentage. This would explain the more challenging and sceptical tone of Ada’s second letter.
‘Indeed the last fortnight is rather a convincing proof that nothing can’: AAL to Sophia De Morgan n.d. spring 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 171, fols. 16–17.
‘A new language is requisite to furnish terms strong enough to express my horror’: AAL to William Lovelace, 8 April 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 165, fols. 160–89.
‘it is impossible to know her without loving her – or to look into her mind without respecting all she has done’: Anna Jameson to AINB, 28 August 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 75.
Annabella confessed that the presentation of her protégée was nevertheless causing friction: AINB to Harriet Siddons, 7 August 1841, HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
‘I think he has bequeathed this task to me! . . . I have a duty to perform towards him’: AAL to ANIB, n.d. 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42.
‘You know I am a d—d odd animal!’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 31 December 1841, MSBY Dep. c. 367, MSBY-9.
‘I am quite in a fuss about my mathematics, for I am much in want of a lift at the moment’: AAL to Augustus De Morgan, June 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron, box 170.
‘My intended journey to Town is only on particular business’: AAL to Augustus De Morgan, 27 October 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron, box 170.
Seemingly bewitched by the ‘waywardness, beauty & intangibility’: Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace: Byron’s Legitimate Daughter (John Murray, 1977), p. 161.
‘a naughty sick Bird’: AAL to William Lovelace, n.d. June 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166, fols. 50–100.
The results, judging by Dr Kay’s unpublished journal: the unpublished journal is held in the Kay-Shuttleworth Papers at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, ref. 219, 1/25.
‘tho really what use an old Crow would be to me I know not’: AAL to William Lovelace, n.d. July 1842, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166, fols. 50–100.
In the spring of 1842, Ada’s letters sound as though she has suddenly vaulted into our times: AAL to William Lovelace, n.d. but recording her activity, Thursday, half past four, ibid.
‘. . . and the more scope I have in prospect for it, the more settled, calm & happy, does my mind become’: AAL to William Lovelace in two letters written during the spring and summer of 1842, ibid. ‘And if so, it will be poetry of an unique kind’: n.d. ibid.
she described him to Lovelace as allegedly ‘very handsome and attractive’: AAL to William Lovelace, n.d. July 1842, ibid.
Her affectionate message of congratulation, so he told a gratified Ada: Sir George Crauford to AAL, 3 November 1842, Dep. Lovelace Byron 168, fols. 199–200.
‘I could not read of that meeting without great pain’: Both letters are in Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), p. 362.
‘And then came all sorts of vituperations’: AAL to AINB, [23] July 1842, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fols. 56–8.
‘I cannot bear to think of the folly’: AAL to WL, n.d. July 1842, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166.
It was sad that ‘a nice stingy Old Hen, (especially about horses . . .)’ should be feeling bereft: AAL to AINB, 25 July 1842, written two days after Medora’s departure to France, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fols. 58–60.
‘I know you would prefer such a state of things . . . dear Mate’: AAL to William Lovelace, n.d. July 1842, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166, fols. 50–100.
‘Time must show. To say the truth, I have less ambition than I had’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 16 December 1842, MSBY Dep. c. 367, MSBY-9.
‘Wheatstone has been with me a long while today’: AAL to William Lovelace, n.d. December 1
842, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166, fols. 50–100.
Chapter Seventeen: My Fair Interpretress (7)
‘so happy that I can scarcely hold my pen,’ wrote Hester to Robert and Louisa Noel: Hester King Jr to Robert Noel, 8 February 1843 (WP, Add MS 54089).
‘or if you really cannot (tho I am sure you can, if you will) stay so long’: AAL to Charles Babbage, 8 February 1843, BL, Add MS B37192.
‘the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines” ’: From Note A, in Ada’s Translator’s Notes to M. Menabrea’s Memoirs, Scientific Memoirs, Selected from the Transactions of Foreign Academies of Science and Learned Societies and from Foreign Journals, ed. by Richard Taylor (1843), vol. 3, p. 697. Further quotations from the article and translation in Chapter 17 will provide only the relevant page number.
‘Babbage did not know what he had; Ada started to see glimpses and successfully described them’: Stephen Wolfram, Idea Makers: Personal Perspectives on the Lives & Ideas of Some Notable People (Wolfram Media, 2016), p. 96.
She had taken the story of how she had been brutally cast aside by Lady Byron: Selina Doyle to AINB, 21 March 1843, Dep. Lovelace Byron 68, fols. 123–4.
‘You have but one course to pursue’: AAL to EML, 24 March 1843, Dep. Lovelace Byron 172, fol. 204.
‘Elle est plus tranquille aujourd’hui et prête a faire tout ce qu’on veut’: Selina Doyle to AINB, 25 March 1843, Dep. Lovelace Byron 68, fol. 124.
‘I think I then told you that I believed her reason was not sound’: Louisa Barwell to AINB, 9 April 1843, Dep Lovelace Byron 63.
Medora recorded that the meek and somewhat bewitched Dr King had been both intimidating and abusive: Charles Mackay (ed.), Elizabeth Medora Leigh: A History and an Autobiography (R. Bentley, 1869), pp. 149–50. Mackay was the father of the novelist Marie Corelli.
‘I will have it well, & fully done; or not at all’: All of the quotations in this paragraph and its predecessor are taken from the 1843 June– August letters published (but with rationalised dates that often conflict with Ada’s own) in Betty Toole’s Ada: The Enchantress of Numbers (Strawberry Press, 1992), Ch. 10.