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
