Immense though Mrs Moore’s contribution to the world of Byron scholarship has been, her espousal of the poet resulted in a uniquely skewed take upon his life. Viewing herself almost in the role of a consort, it proved impossible for Moore to take an impartial view of the actual wife who had, after a single year, abandoned Lord Byron and left his house. She herself, she must have felt, would never have shown such disloyalty.
Drawing upon the wealth of family letters which was placed in her hands at Crabbet and working in close correspondence at all times with Leslie Marchand, the magnificent second editor of Byron’s letters (Rowland Prothero was the first), Mrs Moore used that rich resource to create an unforgettable portrait of Lady Byron as a neurotic hypochondriac, a mutton-stuffing glutton, a grudging giver and a humourless despot.
The truth about Annabella, as Julia Markus set out to demonstrate in Lady Byron and Her Daughters (2015) – following the trail explored by Ethel Coburn Mayne (1929) and Joan Pierson (1992) – is both more complex and more nuanced. Annabella was undeniably a controlling, over-legalistic and often difficult woman, one whose enlightened attitude to reform and whose generous use of a great fortune to improve social conditions went hand in hand with an attitude that can, at best, be described as interventionist. She did bear grudges, as William Lovelace discovered to his cost. Loyal to her friends and kind to the less fortunate of her family, Annabella never ceased to love the captivating and capricious genius with whom she lived as his wife for just one year. As the mother of his child, she did what she sincerely believed was best for a young woman whose personality resisted moulding. She took great pride in Ada, never ceasing to encourage her in her studies, while worrying about her always fragile health and changeable spirit. She turned against William Lovelace only when she felt that he had betrayed his position as a fellow guardian of this precious, but erratic, young woman. At the time of her death, Lady Byron commanded almost universal respect, admiration and – from those who had known her as a loyal friend – love.
Annabella’s daughter has suffered a different fate. After a century of obscurity, Ada Lovelace stands in danger of becoming lost behind the growing radiance of a reputation that perceives her largely as an icon: an exceptional female pioneer of computer technology.
In 1869, Ada Lovelace signified nothing more to Harriet Beecher Stowe than the fact that she was married to an aristocrat. Not until the 1950s and the dawn of the computer age did it begin to be realised just how exceptional a contribution Byron’s daughter made to a technological future that she would have embraced with delight. It is a future that has retrospectively embraced her. In 2018, we have an Ada Lovelace Day, a NASA language named in her honour, two documentaries about her and a burgeoning Ada Institute for Digital Technology. There are blogs about Ada, courses upon Ada, conferences about Ada, exhibitions about Ada, biographies of Ada, a (magnificent) graphic novel about Ada and children’s books about Ada. In Britain and America, the name of Ada Lovelace now carries as much, if not more, weight than that of her celebrated father.
Ada revered her father. In celebrating Lovelace’s powerful intelligence and her predictive gifts, however, it is crucial that we recognise the twin sources of Ada’s extraordinary personality: that combination of her mother’s enquiring, scholarly intelligence with her father’s imagination and volatile temperament; a dangerous blend of fierce self-discipline and unbridled euphoria.
Ada Lovelace spent most of her short life trying to live up to her mother’s high expectations, while striving to compete against a father who increasingly haunted her imagination. Poetically, he soared above her; in personality, with all its attendant risks, Ada was – and gloried in being – the daughter of Lord Byron, through and through.
Annabella’s role in controlling and encouraging the Byronic side of her daughter’s vivid personality cannot be overestimated. We can never hope to understand Lady Byron if we fail to accept how torn she was between a romantic desire to see her beloved husband recreated – Annabella’s tender pride in Ada’s own late-flowering (and not terribly good) poetry speaks for itself – and a prudent terror of seeing reborn in her child the violent demons that she had personally confronted in her husband.
One thing is certain. Lady Byron followed her husband’s wishes concerning his daughter to the letter. Ada was brought up – and brought up with far greater consideration, sympathy and love than has been granted in the past – by her mother. But the setter of the ground rules – the watchful advisor from afar during the first eight years of his daughter’s life – was that astonishing, legendary father whom Ada never knew.
* It was Lord Lovelace who had urged his son to take on the barony, in order to keep the Wentworth title in the family. It would pass from Ralph (d.1906) to Ralph’s daughter (d.1917) and then, via Ralph’s sister, Anne (d.1917) to her daughter, Judith.
* Sold by John Murray IV and since demolished, ‘Newstead’ now lies under Centre Court, Wimbledon. A local street, Newstead Way, still marks its past presence – and offers fine views of Centre Court.
* A further work, a life of the Marquis de Boissy, (‘mon bon mari’) remained unfinished. A third, The Life of Lord Byron in Italy, was published (with more praise rightly being granted to its translator, Michael Rees, and heroic editor, Peter Cochran, than to its long-winded author) in 2005.
* In
