‘Lady Byron into the country – Byron won’t go!’: Hobhouse’s Diary, 17 January 1816 (see note on p. 487).
‘a fine affair in their imagination your absence – & my story!’: AL to AIB, 19 January 1816, Coleridge and Prothero, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 320.
had a ‘too confiding disposition’: Sir Francis Doyle to AIB, 18 July 1816, Dep. Lovelace Byron 68, fols. 18–19.
she broke down, on certain occasions, in hysterical fits of sobbing: Statement by Mrs Fletcher to John Hanson, n.d., NLS.
‘She will break my heart if she takes up the thing in bitterness against him’: AIB to Mrs Clermont, 22 January 1816, Dep. Lovelace Byron 66, fol. 5.
‘I would not but have seen Lushington for the World’: JN to AIB, 25 January 1816, Dep. Lovelace Byron 36, fols. 12–14.
the lawyer had privately ‘deemed a reconciliation with Lord Byron practicable’: SL to AIB, 31 January 1830. Lushington’s letter was published by AIB with his consent in her privately circulated ‘Remarks’ in Moore’s 1830 biography of Byron.
‘It is worth the sadness if it brings anything good to him’: AIB Memorandum, 27 January 1816, in Malcolm Elwin, Lord Byron’s Wife (Macdonald, 1962), p. 379.
‘Kate! I will buckler thee against a million!’: Byron to AIB, 3 February 1816, BL&J, vol. 5.
In an afterthought addressed to Mrs Clermont, the carrier of her letter to Lushington’s home: Byron to AIB, 8 February 1816, BL&J, vol. 5; AIB’s ‘Remarks’ on this letter were sent to Mrs Clermont on 13 February 1816, for transmission to Lushington.
Lady Melbourne asked her brother Ralph why he had instructed friends ‘to give the event every possible publicity’: Lady Melbourne to RN, 12 February 1816, in Jonathan David Gross (ed.), Byron’s ‘Corbeau Blanc’: The Life and Letters of Lady Melbourne (Rice University Press, 1997), p. 314.
marvelling at ‘the unexampled gentleness, goodness, and wise forbearances’: Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), p. 259.
‘he had been guilty of the offence which, of all offences, is punished most severely’: Thomas Macaulay, ‘Letters and Journals of Lord Byron; with Notices of his Life, by Thomas Moore’, Edinburgh Review, June 1831.
Byron’s boasts to Annabella ‘of his adulteries and indecencies’: S. M. Waddams, Law, Politics and the Church of England: The Career of Stephen Lushington 1782–1873 (CUP, 1992), p. 114.
Lushington confirmed that ‘when I was informed by you of facts utterly unknown . . . my opinion was entirely changed’: SL to AIB, 31 January 1830, ibid., see note to p. 114 above, ‘the lawyer had privately “deemed . . .’.
‘I am in boundless respect of her,’ Lushington would write years later: SL to Frances Carr, his sister-in-law, n.d. 1852, quoted in Joan Pierson, The Real Lady Byron (Robert Hale, 1992), p. 32.
‘Oh– Bell– to see you thus stifling and destroying all feeling, all affections – all duties’: Byron to AIB, 4 March 1816, BL&J, vol. 5; AIB, ‘Reasons for my return urged by Mrs Leigh’, 5 March 1816, DLM transcript.
Reshaped by the super-cautious Stephen Lushington, it became a nebulous web of conditionals: Lushington’s Statement is given in full in Ralph Milbanke, Earl of Lovelace, Astarte: A Fragment of Truth Concerning George Gordon Byron, Sixth Lord Byron (Christophers, 1905 and 1921), pp. 46–8; see also Elwin, Malcolm, Lord Byron’s Wife (Macdonald, 1962), p. 441.
her brother, while deranged, could once have committed ‘some act which he would not avow’: AL to Francis Hodgson, 14 March 1816, Dep. Lovelace Byron 84, fols. 220–6.
Byron’s royal admirer, young Princess Charlotte, declared that she had wept ‘like a fool’: HRH Princess Charlotte to Miss Mercer Elphinstone, April 1816, Lady Charlotte Bury, The Diary of A Lady-in-Waiting, edited by Francis Steuart, 2 vols. (J. Lane, 1908), vol. 1, p. 399.
she described her own ‘most tender affection for — . What is the reason?’: AIB, journal fragment, 16 September 1820, Dep. Lovelace Byron 117, fol. 4. Punctuation has been altered here to make the original author’s meaning clearer. Annabella’s original gives the blank for the omitted name followed without a break by ‘—what is the reason?’
From Augusta – with whom he had just parted for the last time – he had asked only that she should keep him informed: Byron to AL, in a brief postscript, 15 April 1816, BL&J, vol. 5.
Chapter Nine: In the Public Eye (1816–24)
if Harriet Beecher Stowe’s memory of her impressions as a 5-year-old were to be trusted: Harriet Beecher Stowe, ‘The True Story of Lady Byron’s Life’, Atlantic Monthly, September 1869.
‘I think my noble friend is something like my old peacock’: Walter Scott to J. B. S. Morritt, 16 May 1816, in John Gibson Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott (Robert Cadell, 1845), p. 332.
‘True Jedwood justice was dealt out to him’: Thomas Babington Macaulay, ‘Letters and Journals of Lord Byron; with Notices of his Life, by Thomas Moore’, Edinburgh Review, June 1831.
the privately printed and widely distributed ‘Remarks’ of 1830 in which Annabella defended her dead parents: AINB, ‘Remarks’ (on Moore’s Life of Lord Byron) were privately printed and widely distributed in March 1830, following the publication in January 1830 of Moore’s first of two volumes. In 1831, the ‘Remarks’ were bound into a new edition of Moore’s book, at Annabella’s request.
‘people at Ely and Peterborough Stared at us very much, and Mama said we were Lionesses – pray what does that mean?’: AIB (writing, as she frequently did, as Ada) to JN, 11 June 1816, Dep. Lovelace Byron 30.
Initially, Byron refused to believe it: Byron to John Murray, 21 December 1822, BL&J, vol. 10.
Lady Melbourne remarked that Lady Byron’s face was ‘sad and strained’: Lady Melbourne to Hobhouse, 18 October 1816, in Jonathan David Gross (ed.), Byron’s ‘Corbeau Blanc’: The Life and Letters of Lady Melbourne (Rice University Press, 1997), pp. 331–3. (This long letter offers a perfect example of how Lady Melbourne operated behind the scenes in her protégé’s life.)
‘the only important calumny that ever was advanced against you’: P. B. Shelley to Byron, 29 September 1816, in Frederick L. Jones (ed.), Letters of Percy Bysse Shelley 2 vols. (OUP, 1964), vol. 2, pp. 363–4.
‘in fact I am the one much the more to blame . . . quite inexcusable’: AL to AIB, 17 September 1816, while enclosing a letter from Byron, Dep. Lovelace Byron 79, fols. 139–40.
Annabella remarked that Byron’s satire was ‘so good as to make me smile at myself’: Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), p. 283.
The journal, as its publisher proudly pointed out, carried ‘an article on a great Poet’: John Murray to AIB, Friday, 7 February 1817, Dep. Lovelace Byron 94, fols. 70–1.
as even Annabella had to admit – Scott had ‘not expressed, but I think directly implied’: AIB to Theresa Villiers (about the Quarterly Review article), 6 March 1816, Dep. Lovelace Byron 114.
‘but to injure, and then to desert, and then to turn back and wound her widow’d privacy’: Blackwood’s Magazine, August 1819. Byron never discovered whether the author was either Scott’s son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart, or John Wilson, a regular writer for Blackwood’s. Wilson wrote the piece.
‘I was thought a devil, because Lady Byron was allowed to be an angel’: Marguerite Blessington, Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington (H. Colburn, 1834), pp. 160–1.
Chapter Ten: In Search of a Father
‘The little boy [Hugo, an orphaned nephew of Mary Montgomery] is a very nice child’: AAB to AINB, 7 December 1824, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 15–16.
He asked for his daughter to be taught music (in which neither parent had any skill) and Italian: Sending an Italian book to her friend Harriet Siddons’s daughter, Elizabeth, Annabella wrote: ‘The language is beautiful, so do not get the translation. I wish your Mother could enjoy the original.’ AINB to Elizabeth Siddons, 13 June 18[34], HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
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nbsp; ‘Is the Girl imaginative? . . . Is she social or solitary’: Byron to AL, 12 October 1823. AINB to AL, 1 December 1823, both in Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), pp. 196–7.
‘Her prevailing characteristic is cheerfulness and good-temper’: AINB to AL, 1 December 1823, ibid., pp. 196–7.
Byron’s ‘pertickeler wish’ had been that his valet should carry a message to his wife and child: William Fletcher to John Murray, 21 April 1824, 43531 NLS.
she begged him – vainly – to recall what her husband’s final message to her had been: Mayne, op. cit., p. 297.
‘the fiercest Animals have the rarest number in their litters’: Byron, 6 November 1821, BL&J, vol. 9.
‘I had a strange prepossession that she would never be fond of me’: AIB to Theresa Villiers, 11 November 1818, Dep. Lovelace Byron 114, fols. 190–1.
‘She looked round the Bed and on the Bed, and then into the Closet’: JN to AIB, 5 September 1817, Dep. Lovelace Byron 37, fols. 37–8.
her ‘dearest wish to prove a better child than she [Lady Noel] has yet found me’: AIB to Harriet Siddons, 20 September 1817, HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
‘Hastings will be good for me’: AIB to Harriet Siddons, 27 March 1820, ibid.
Contemplating the dreary years ahead of enacting ‘a calm performance of duty’: AIB to Harriet Siddons, 11 May 1821, ibid.
‘No person can be more rational, companiable [sic] and endearing than this rare child’: Lamont Journal, 20–22 June and 7 July 1821, Dep. Lovelace Byron 118, item 5.
A letter addressed to Cousin George’s mother, now also known as Lady Byron, proudly announced her near perfect command of Spanish and Italian: AAB to 7th Lady Byron, 7 December 1824, Dep. Lovelace Byron 168. Ada, although she scarcely knew her Aunt Augusta, was a resolute user of her own full name. Others addressed her as ‘Ada’. Ada always signed herself as Augusta Ada, or ‘A. A.’
She could understand her mother’s enduring affection for gentle Sophy Tamworth: AAB to AINB, 9 September 1824, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 13–14.
‘tho from the accidental delay of a letter, my consent may have been inferred by the party in question’: AINB to John Murray, 31 March 1826, NLS.
After glumly admitting that it had been ‘quite shocking’ of her to announce she did not believe in prayers: AAB to AINB, 1 and 3 June 1826, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 27–8, 30–1.
her mother could now manage to scrawl in her own hand the simple words ‘much better’: AAB to AINB, 3 February 1828, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 54–5.
Ada admitted that there had been times when ‘I really thought . . . you could not live’: AAB to AINB, 8 April 1828, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 67–9.
‘I have got a scheme about a . . . steamengine’: AAB to AINB, 4 April 1828, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 63–6.
‘very gentle . . . just a little pottering thing . . .’: AAB to AINB, 12 October 1828, in a letter playfully addressed ‘To the Right Honourable Immortal Grand Crockery Panjandrum Lady Noel Byron from the little Panjandrum of Clay – Oh Alas!’, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 70–3.
Flying had been abandoned for the creation of ‘my Planetarium’: AAB to Sophia Frend (later De Morgan), 4 February 1829, Dep. Lovelace Byron 171, fols. 16–17.
Chapter Eleven: A Rainbow’s Arc (1829–35)
Augusta, whose only concern was to please the beguiling Henry, announced in April 1829 that she felt personally ‘very hurt’: AL to AINB, 20 April 1829, Dep. Lovelace Byron 84, fols. 68–70.
Perhaps, the answer is best summed up by Annabella: AINB to Theresa Villiers, 11 May 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 114.
By 1 December, Annabella was feeling angry enough to identify Lushington to young Lizzie Siddons: ANB to Elizabeth Siddons (later Mair), 1 December 1829, HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
‘From your representations and the conclusions you draw’: AINB to AL, 17 January 1830, 43411, NLS.
To Henry, she despatched a plaintive squawk of command: The letters between Medora, Trevanion and Augusta, dating from February 1831, were published in Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), pp. 343–4. At the Bodleian, the main holding of Medora’s letters is in Dep. Lovelace Byron 85–6 (to AINB) and 68 (to Selina Doyle). Miscellaneous letters to her are in 87, fols. 1–60.
‘poor Mrs Leigh and all connected with her are mad’: Michael and Melissa Bakewell, Augusta Leigh: Byron’s Half-Sister (Chatto, 2000), p. 336.
Selina Doyle and she were struggling to read German together, she told Robert Noel: AAB to Robert Noel, 27 August 1830, Betty Toole, The Enchantress of Numbers (Strawberry Press, 1992), p. 42.
Laughing at her own ‘disputation habits’: AAB to Arabella Lawrence, n.d., summer 1830, Dep. Lovelace Byron 172, fols. 180–2.
‘it will be so nice . . . and I shall have no trouble in making up my mind about anything’: AAB to Arabella Lawrence, n.d., Sunday, August 1830, Dep. Lovelace Byron 172, fols. 184–5.
‘No creed. No scripture books’: AINB to Elizabeth Blackwell, 27 May 1851, in Julia Boyd, The Excellent Doctor Blackwell: The Life of the First Woman Physician (Sutton, 2006), pp. 126–7.
‘God knows I have enough of it, and a great plague it often is’: AAL to AINB, 21 April 1840, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41.
by August, in Brighton, Ada was able to boast to Selina Doyle’s illegitimate niece, Fanny Smith: AAB to Fanny Smith, 5 August 1832, Dep. Lovelace Byron 112, fols. 94–100.
‘as far as they could without actual penetration’: Woronzow Greig, Memoir, MSBY Dep. b. 206, folder MSIF 2–4.
Miss Byron’s public disgrace had just been avoided: Sophia De Morgan, Threescore Years and Ten: Reminiscences of the late Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan (London, 1895), p. 89.
a consequent debt of gratitude ‘of which I am so sure I shall never need to be reminded by you’: AAB to WK, 28 June 1835, Toole, op. cit., pp. 76–7.
‘I cannot consider that the parent has any right to direct the child’: AAB to AINB, 19 May 1833, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 85–8.
‘my illustrious parent’ had looked ‘very pretty indeed’: AAB to Fanny Smith, 9 November 1833, Dep. Lovelace Byron 112, fols. 94–100.
Over a decade later, she would offer a heartfelt apology for the way she had behaved as a wilful teenager: AAL to AINB, n.d. November 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fols. 152–8.
‘[For] nothing but very close & intense application’: AAB to Dr William King, 9 March 1834, Toole, op. cit., pp. 53–4
Chapter Twelve: Mathematical Friendships (1834–5)
the Irish novelist Lady Morgan decided she resembled ‘one of the respectable twaddling chaperones one meets’: H. V. Morton, A Traveller in Italy (Methuen, 1964), pp. 482–4. Morton’s delightful account of Mrs Somerville brings her to life with remarkable skill.
‘while her head is among the stars her feet are firm upon the ground’: Maria Edgeworth to an unnamed friend, 17 January 1832, quoted in Mrs Somerville’s posthumously published and heavily edited Personal Recollections (John Murray, 1873), p. 156. (Edgeworth was fascinated by the scientific world, although not herself a contributor to it.)
Mary and her husband were fond of telling the story: Mrs Somerville’s posthumously published Personal Recollections (1873) cite Laplace’s tribute to her from a personal encounter in Paris. Maria Edgeworth confirmed his high opinion in an 1822 letter to her mother. Laplace, she said, had observed that Mrs Somerville could not only understand, but correct him. (C. Colvin (ed.), Maria Edgeworth: Letters from England 1813–44 (OUP, 1971), pp. 371–2.)
‘the most extraordinary woman in Europe, a mathematician of the very first rank’: David Brewster to J. D. Forbes, 11 September 1829, Forbes Papers, University of St Andrews Library.
‘Ada was much attached to me,’ Mrs Somerville would later recall: Mary Somerville, Personal Recollections, op. cit., Ch. 10.
By 24 March, Ada was boasting to Dr King: AA
B to Dr William King, 24 March 1834, Dep. Lovelace Byron 172, fols. 131–4.
‘You must trammel your mind . . .’ he warned: Dr King to AAB, 24 April 1834, Dep. Lovelace Byron 172, fols. 132–9.
‘The logarithmetical Frankenstein’: London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, Etc (1832) commenting on Babbage’s appearance at a meeting of the newly formed British Association for the Advancement of Science.
subsidising an invention which – unlike James Watt’s steam engine – had been developed without any prototype: The reference is made in Dionysius Lardner’s defence of Babbage in the Edinburgh Review (July 1834, pp. 266–7).
Sophia Frend later described how, ‘young as she was’, Ada had immediately grasped the concept: Sophia De Morgan, Memoir of Augustus de Morgan (1882; republished by Elibron Classics, 2005), p. 89.
‘We both went to see the thinking machine’: Lady Byron to Dr William King, 21 June 1833, Dep. Lovelace Byron 77, fol. 217.
‘I am afraid that when a machine, or a lecture, or anything of the kind, come[s] in my way’: AAB to Mary Somerville, 8 July 1834, MSBY, Dep. c. 367, folder MSBY-2.
‘Ada does not think anything the world offers worth trouble, except Music’: AINB to Elizabeth Siddons, n.d. 1834, HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
‘The risk to man and beast – the desperate gambling among the spectators – the futility of the object’: AINB to Harriet Siddons, n.d., HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
‘I feel my intellect reviving . . .’: AINB to Harriet Siddons, 8 August 1834, HRC, Bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
‘My dear Annabella. You must pardon my scolding!’: AAB to Lady Annabella Acheson, 5 December 1834, Dep. Lovelace Byron 168, fols. 28–9. Ada’s early mathematical writings were freshly transcribed and put online in 2016 by Dr Christopher Hollings and Professor Adrian Rice (see Ch. 15, note to p. 224, ‘Festina lente’).
‘indeed I think I am making great progress’: AAB to Annabella Acheson, 26 November 1834, Dep. Lovelace Byron 168, fols. 25–7.
It was ‘in the highest department of mathematics – I understand it to include the means of solving equations that hitherto had been considered insoluble’: AINB, unpublished diary, 15 December 1834, Dep. Lovelace Byron 117, fol. 1.
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