In Byron's Wake
Page 55
‘quite thunderstruck at the power of the writing’: AAL to Babbage [n.d. August] 1843, BL, Add MS B37192.
‘Can it be the daughter who eloped with Trevanion who married her sister?’: Hobhouse’s Diary, 26 July 1843. See note on p. 487.
‘I once more remind you that I am your child’: See note to p. 271 above, ‘Medora recorded . . .’ The letter from Elizabeth Medora Leigh to Augusta Leigh, 15 August 1843, is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, and is reprinted in full by Doris Langley Moore, in Ada, Countess of Lovelace: Byron’s Legitimate Daughter (John Murray, 1977), pp. 184–5.
At the very least, he bore testimony to ‘a most indomitable industry . . .’: AAL to AINB, n.d., but probably the first week of August 1843, DLM transcript.
‘as good a passport to posterity (if I am to have one) as “the wife of Byron” ’: AINB to AAL, n.d. 1843, ibid.
A new and ‘very frightful’ crisis in her health: ibid.
Back at Ockham, Ada composed a fourteen-page letter: AAL to Charles Babbage, n.d. August 1843, BL, Add MS B37192.
‘that horrible problem – the three bodies’: Charles Babbage to AAL, Dep. Lovelace Byron 168, fols. 49–50 (all Babbage’s letters to AAL are in this section).
Chapter Eighteen: The Enchantress (1843–4)
‘Science is no longer a lifeless abstraction’: Michael Garvey, The Silent Revolution: or The Future effects of Steam and Electricity upon the Condition of Mankind (W. and F. G. Cash, 1852), p. 3.
‘I don’t the least mind all I have suffered’: AAL to Sophia De Morgan, 21 December 184[3], Dep. Lovelace Byron 171, fols. 16–17. Betty Toole, in Ada: The Enchantress of Numbers (Strawberry Press, 1992), suggests 1844, but 1843 sits better with a reference to the bad effects of intensive mathematical work (the Menabrea ‘Notes’) undertaken six months earlier.
‘as to the microscopical structure and changes in the brain, nervous matter, & also in the blood’: AAL to Robert Noel, 9 August 1843, Dep. Lovelace Byron 173, fols. 155–8.
She had also spoken mysteriously of ‘present troubles’: W. B. Carpenter to AAL, 27 November 1843, Dep. Lovelace Byron 169, fols. 119–24.
Annabella was sufficiently displeased by his revelations: Joanna Baillie to AINB, 19 December 1843, Dep. Lovelace Byron 62.
‘I was completely stunned’: W. B. Carpenter to AAL, 24 January 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 169, fols. 119–24.
‘Would not a word from you as to liberties I had even offered’: W. B. Carpenter to AAL, ibid.
‘My brain then began to turn & twist’: AAL to AINB, 5 p.m. Monday, n.d. [early 1844], DLM transcript.
‘What a kind kind mate ou is’: AAL to William Lovelace, n.d. [early 1844], Dep. Lovelace Byron 166, fols. 101–25. Toole, op.cit., suggests 1845 or 1846.
‘I do not feel I am fairly dealt with in this’: AAL to William Lovelace, 10 April 1844, ibid.
‘an independent & skilful swimmer . . .’: AAL to William Lovelace, 14 August 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166.
‘This is my year of accidents’: AAL to William Lovelace, 15 August 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166.
In fact, Miss Martineau might herself benefit from the advice of a young lady who now wrote with brimming confidence of ‘my advancing studies on the nervous system’: AAL to AINB, 10 October 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fol. 150.
Lady Byron had been ‘more white and tremulously weak than I had ever seen her’: Anna Jameson to Catherine Sedgwick, July 1845, Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers, Coll. 2, Massachusetts Historical Society.
Ada, while persuaded that the ‘many exciting expeditions, and irregular amusements’: AAL to AINB, 10 October 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fol. 150.
‘I think Dr Carpenter is on the right track’: AINB to AAL, 20 November 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 55, fols. 126–85.
a frame so susceptible that it is an experimental laboratory: AAL to AINB, 11 November 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fol. 150.
‘. . . if I can take a certain standing in the course of the next few years’: AAL to William Lovelace, 29 November 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166.
‘that Enchantress who has thrown her magical spell around the most abstract of Sciences’: Charles Babbage to Michael Faraday, 9 September 1843, Frank L. James (ed.), Correspondence of Michael Faraday 6 vols. (Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1996), vol. 3.
Presenting herself to Faraday as ‘the bride of science’: Michael Faraday’s letters to Ada can be found in Dep. Lovelace Byron 171, fols. 44–53 and in Henry Bence Jones, Life & Letters of Michael Faraday (Longmans, Green and Co, 1870). Ada’s letters to Faraday are published in Frank L. James (ed.), Correspondence of Michael Faraday, 6 vols. (Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1996), vol. 3.
‘With Many Many Thanks’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 15 November 1844, MSBY, Dep. c. 367 MSBY-9.
‘I really have become as much tied to a profession’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 5 December 1844, ibid.
Chapter Nineteen: The Lady from Porlock (1844–9)
Born at Fyne Court, Crosse was running the family estate: The best account of Crosse and his family is given by Brian Wright, Andrew Crosse and the Mite that Shook the World: The Life and Work of an Electrical Pioneer (Matador, 2015).
His wife’s undisciplined habits: WL’s letters to ANIB in the autumn of 1844 are in Dep. Lovelace Byron 46.
He did not, Ada was pleased to announce, regard her ideas as ‘mere enthusiasm’: AAL’s letters to her husband about the Fyne Court visit are in Dep. Lovelace Byron 166.
Her mother, she told Grieg, had ‘quite chuckled’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 5 December 1844, Betty Toole, Ada: The Enchantress of Numbers (Strawberry Press, 1992), pp. 305–6. AAL’s letters to Greig in 1844–5 are in MSBY, Dep. c. 367, MSBY-9.
‘He is a good & just man. He is a son to me . . . But it has been a hopeless case . . .’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 4 February 1845, in Toole, op. cit., pp. 313–14.
‘quite unconnected with any of my own’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 12 February 1845 MSBY, Dep. c. 367, MSBY-9.
capable of the ‘enormous and continued labour’ required for scientific work: James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (University of Chicago, 2000), p. 242.
‘habitually, in remembrance of the many delightful & improving hours we have jointly passed in various literary pursuits’: Ada’s bequest to John Crosse, Dep. Lovelace Byron 175, fol. 161.
‘I never saw a child to whom a firm, cheerful & tender influence was more wanting’: Anna Jameson to AINB, 3 January 1845, Dep. Lovelace Byron 75.
‘You poor dear patient thing’: WL to AAL, 30 August 1845, DLM–17 transcript.
‘one of the saddest’: WL to AAL, 2 September 1845, ibid.
how could he do it without warning them that the Bible was ‘mistaken’ and the text ‘interpolated with fables’: William Lovelace to AINB, n.d. but seemingly July/August 1845, DLM transcript.
their happiness, ‘if happy they are, will soon be at an end’: Hobhouse’s Diary, 3 June 1846 (see note on p. 487).
‘a man of fashion’: Harriet Beecher Stowe supplied this description of Lovelace, a man whom she had never met, in Lady Byron Vindicated (Sampson Low, Son & Marston, 1870), p. 443.
Would such behaviour get her into ‘a scrape with the other lady-guests’: AAL to Charles Babbage, 18 November 1846, BL, Add MS B37192.
‘the repeated & unjust condemnations of Lady Lovelace’s husband during this series of years’: AAL to Lord Fortescue, 22 June 1846, LKC.
Secretly, however, Ada knew that her odious mother-in-law’s claims to be terrified of her eldest son: Lady Hester King Sr’s self-justifying explanation of her mistreatment of William Lovelace seems never to have got beyond the drafted memorandum that is in the Locke King archive at Brooklands.
Chapter Twenty: Vanity Fair (1847–50)
Promising that the debt would be paid off: AAL to Henry Currie, 1 May 1848, Dep. Lovelace Byron 168.
> Lady Byron viewed atrocious social conditions at home as a call to arms: AINB to AAL, 25 February 1848, LP. Her contribution to funds in the Irish famine, together with her philanthropic work in Leicestershire, is clearly identified in the 1860–1 correspondence of Harriet Martineau, at a time when Martineau was gathering material to write a biography of Lady Byron (Martineau Papers, 125–30, CRL).
Greeting an embarrassed Lady Byron in 1851 by doffing their caps in gratitude for the ‘many sums of money’: Leicester Journal, 16 June 1851.
Calming herself, Annabella asked for news of the Rathbones’s good friend Dr Beecher: AINB to Elizabeth Rathbone, 17 January 1846, HRC, Byron, box 5.6.
Lovelace told his 12-year-old heir that ‘the poor’ had thankfully become ‘too poor to cause trouble’: WL to BO, 26 April 1848, Dep. Lovelace Byron 167, fols. 3–4.
Further evidence of how far Lovelace was removed from social reality surfaced: WL to AAL (n.d., but probably c.1848), DLM transcript.
‘You will,’ the artist’s proud sitter promised a once-again absent Ada on 6 January 1850, ‘be very gay’: WL to AAL, 29 December 1849 and 6 January 1850, Dep. Lovelace Byron 164, fols. 1–40.
‘A friend, to whom I had early communicated the idea, entertained great hopes of its pecuniary success’: Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (Longman, 1864), p. 353.
her first known reference to ongoing discussions with Babbage about ‘Games, and notations for them’: AAL to Charles Babbage, 30 September 1848, BL, Add MS B37192. All quotations from Ada’s letters to Babbage in this chapter are from this collection.
‘You say nothing of Tic-tac-toe’: AAL to Charles Babbage, 18 October 1849, ibid.
‘A heart like Hester’s, I never did find, and never shall find again upon earth’: Sir George Crauford to Lady Hester King Sr, 12 April 1848, LKC.
there was ‘nothing to forgive’: Sophy Tamworth’s brother had succeeded their father as Baron Scarsdale in 1837. AINB to William Lovelace, 28 February 1849, Dep. Lovelace Byron 67, fols. 125–7.
‘peculiarly appropriate to this young lady’: AAL to AINB, 20–22 April 1847, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43, fols. 3–8.
‘excellent stuff in that child’: Anna Jameson to AINB, 28 June 1847, Dep. Lovelace Byron 75.
Such behaviour was absolutely unacceptable in ‘families of my circle’: AAL to AINB, 28 April 1848, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43, fols. 25–8.
‘remarkably well, & wonderfully happy’: AAL to AINB, 15 October 1848, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43, fols. 60–6.
In an undated December letter from the following year: AIK to AAL, December 1850, WP, Add MS 54091.
‘I have reasons’: Marilyn Thomas, The Cleric and the Lady: The Affair of Lady Byron and F. W. Robertson, Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table, vol. 2008, no. 2, p. 404.
a ‘free and easy tone’ that leaned towards ‘downright impertinence’: William Lovelace to AINB, 27 November 1846, DLM transcript.
Byron was ‘never alone’ with Annabella’: AAL to AINB, 6 November 1848. All the quotations given here about the children are from DLM’s transcripts. Nothing – other than Lady Byron’s controlling habits – was deduced from them in her Life of Ada. The originals are in Dep. Lovelace Byron 43.
‘the real and more lasting effects’ of sisterly friendship: AAL to AINB, 15 October 1848, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43, fols. 60–6.
‘a very clever but wild young fellow’ had been given ‘no chance of starting well in life’: Alice E. J. Fanshawe (ed.), Admiral Sir Edward Gennys Fanshawe, GCB: A Record. Notes. Journals. Letters (Spottiswoode, 1904), p. 264.
Chapter Twenty-one: The Hand of the Past (1850–1)
‘The mountain air & mountain life does wonders’: AAL to AINB, 23 September 1850, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43, fols. 126–8.
William, who ‘is anxious to know as soon as possible. He hopes you will not say us Nay . . .’: AAL to Anna Jameson, 9 February 1850, Bonn University Library, Germany.
The name of this mystery lover had better be supplied to her at once: AAL to Woronzow Grieg, 27 June 1850, MSBY Dep c. 367, folder MSBY-9.
‘rents are half paid, and we are in some difficulty . . .’: AAL to AIK, 25 August 1850, Dep. Lovelace Byron 67.
she asked Charles Babbage to arrange for a private inspection of ‘the diamonds’ at the ‘Exhibition d’industrie’, adding that this ‘would help me’: AAL to Charles Babbage, 23 July 1850, BL, Add MS B37192.
Truly, they had believed the Hen still to be at Brighton: AAL to AINB, 19 August 1850, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43.
The autumn tour began: The account of the autumn tour and the discussions of Newstead are taken from the Lovelaces’ copious letters to Lady Byron, in Dep. Lovelace Byron 43 and 46, transcribed by DLM and partly published in Betty Toole, Ada: The Enchantress of Numbers (Strawberry Press, 1992), pp. 366–71.
‘I am threatened with proofs by an eager ardent avis’: WL to AINB, 23 September 1850, DLM transcript.
‘Some very thorough remedial measures must be pursued’: AAL to Charles Babbage, 1 November 1850, BL, Add MS B37192.
‘Nobody’ she [Lady Byron] said, ‘knew him as I did’: Frances Kemble, Records of a Girlhood (Henry Holt, 1880), pp. 167–8.
‘to a class peculiarly interesting to him’: ibid.
‘At such a testimony I started up,’ Lady Byron admitted: The quotations here are from Ethel Coburn Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Constable, 1929), in the account of the meeting which she gives on pp. 408–10. Her description of the encounter remains the most balanced of the many in existence.
‘I have ever entertained of yr kindness to my Sister & several members of her unfortunate family’: Lady Chichester to AINB, 25 May 1856, Dep. Lovelace Byron 65, fols. 251–3. Ralph Lovelace alluded to this letter in Astarte, in order to demonstrate the high regard in which his grandmother had been held by Augusta’s family. Mary Chichester was Augusta’s widowed half-sister.
‘I could not hear distinctly,’ Emily wrote: Emily Leigh to AINB, n.d. May 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 85.
‘I think we shall let our house in May’: AAL to AINB, 10 December 1850, Betty Toole, Ada: The Enchantress of Numbers (Strawberry Press, 1992), p. 377.
‘From the Baron’s account she [Miss Ada Byron] must be perfection’: Sir Richard Ford to [name unknown] Addington, n.d. June 1835, Rowland Prothero (ed.), Letters of Richard Ford (John Murray, 1905), p. 185.
‘to talk over the wonderful combinations in your letter’ . . . he imagined ‘making a book’ to be like ‘living at the brink of a precipice’: Sir Richard Ford to AAL, 13 and 27 January 1851, Dep Lovelace Byron 171, fols. 129–130.
‘in order for your influence in causing them to be followed’: Charles Babbage to AAL, 13 January 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 168.
‘a visit from your own Lady-Bird will be sufficient’: Charles Babbage to AAL, 13 May 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 168.
‘that hour of agony’: AINB to William Lovelace, 9 January 1853, Dep. Lovelace Byron 46, fols. 257–9.
‘disease itself was to be looked upon as a blessing to my daughter’: AINB to WL, ibid.
‘your conduct with regard to me since June 19 1851’: AAL to WL, 11 December 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 46, fols. 236–9.
‘I never remember to have quitted you with so much regret’: AAL to AINB, 3 August and 10 August 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43.
‘Pray do not be angry’: AAL to AINB, 10 April 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 44.
‘Life is so difficult’: AAL to AINB, 16 October 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43.
Chapter Twenty-two: Rainbow’s End (1851–2)
The experiment had greatly intrigued him, and he described it with scientific care: Sir David Brewster, diary entry for 21 October 1851, in Margaret Gordon, The Home Life of Sir David Brewster (D. Douglas, 1869), p. 254.
‘Have patience . . . yet a little longer’: AAL to AINB, 1 September 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43.
‘marching in irresistible power to the sound o
f Music’: AAL to AINB, 29 October 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43.
‘What a very odd mind Byron’s is!’ AAL to AINB, 13 November 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43.
‘unless by yr own wish.’ AAL to Byron Ockham, 15 November 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 167, fol. 10.
‘whatever she likes best’: AAL to Agnes Greig, 29 August 1851, MSBY, Dep. c 367, folder MSBY-10.
wearing the ‘Albanian’ uniform in which – so a fond wife fancied – William always looked his most Byronic: AAL to AIK, 22 and 28 November 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 167, fols. 238–43.
‘how handsome and admired yr daughter will be!’: AAL to WL, n.d. December 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166, fols. 126–85.
‘The marks of reduction & suffering were very strong’: SL to AINB, 4 March 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 89.
‘I have an interest in Ada’: SL to AINB, 30 April 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 89.
‘Oh I am such a sick wretch!’: AAL to AINB, from letters written on 4, 12 and 21 April 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 44.
Ada was threatened with a personal visit on 21 April ‘unless I hear there is increment’: A surprising number of the tipsters’ scrawls survived Lady Byron’s fierce pruning of the archive. I have also drawn on DLM’s detailed notes on tipping and racing notes in the original, pre-Bodleian collection of Lovelace Papers, since I could not identify every item to which she referred in Dep. Lovelace Byron 172, fols. 30–60.
‘Pray let her Ladyship understand in as certain a manner as can be supposed . . .’: ibid.
‘tenderness in a measure’: AINB to Emily Fitzhugh, 9 June 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 69, fols. 118–269, in the form of a journal.
‘such a source of comfort and happiness’: Charles Locock to William Lovelace, 20 August 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 173, fols. 1–25. The letter was later copied out by Annabella for the benefit of her lawyers.
‘so gentle and kind’: AIK to RGK, 3 August 1852, WP, Add MS 54093.
‘a Father’s love to bring her to Christ’: AINB to Agnes Greig, n.d. 1852, MSBY Dep c. 367, folder MSBY-7.