12 October 1851
Death in London of Augusta Leigh
27 November 1852
Ada dies at 6 Great Cumberland Place
16 May 1860
Lady Byron dies at St George’s Terrace, Primrose Hill
1 September 1862
Death in Wimbledon of Viscount Ockham
February 1869
The first – and cool – response in print in the UK to Teresa Guiccioli’s long book about Byron, in which Lady Byron is denigrated
July 1869
John Paget, in Blackwood’s, supports the Guiccioli account and follows her lead in attacking Lady Byron
Summer 1869
Ralph Wentworth marries Fanny Heriot; Anne King-Noel marries Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
September 1869
Publication in the UK and the US of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s magazine article, ‘True Story’, in which she defends Lady Byron against the previous attacks
January 1870
Publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s expanded, rethought defence of Lady Byron, as Lady Byron Vindicated
18 October 1871
Death of Charles Babbage
1888
Leslie Stephen publishes a DNB essay on Byron, in which Lady Byron is again denigrated
1889
Ralph Wentworth privately publishes Lady Noel Byron and the Leighs
29 December 1893
Death of William Lovelace; Ralph Wentworth becomes 2nd Earl of Lovelace
1905
Publication of Astarte, Ralph Lovelace’s assessment of the Byron separation and defence of his grandmother against previous attacks upon her reputation
1906
Death of Ralph Lovelace at Ockham Park
1917
Death of Ralph’s sister, Lady Anne Blunt, Viscountess Wentworth, following the death of his daughter, Ada Mary (Molly) in the same year
1920
Publication of Astarte, edited by Mary, Countess of Lovelace, with additional material
NOTE ON ADA’S HEALTH
Nobody has yet succeeded in identifying just what it was that Ada Lovelace suffered from. Although her early and severe attack of semi-paralysis followed upon measles, it is very rare indeed for measles to cause such a drastic collapse of health. (The last reported case was in 1964.) The cause of Ada’s death is not in doubt, but what are we to make of the continual breakdowns in health, the violent mood swings, the desire for solitude (expressed to Andrew Crosse before her first visit to his Somerset home) when one of these attacks afflicted her and – most perplexingly of all, perhaps – the ‘mad eyes’ referred to by Charles Locock and the swollen facial features which remained in evidence, as Ada wrote in one apologetic letter, to Agnes and Woronzow Greig, for several days?
A thyroid condition is not applicable, since this would have been accompanied by an increase in weight and Ada – as her images clearly show – became increasingly emaciated. (Anorexia cannot be ruled out; Ada’s father dieted ferociously to keep himself trim and Ada’s husband made it clear that he detested overweight people.)
A condition called cyclothymia holds out a possible answer. A cyclothymic personality will undergo rapid changes of mood, periods of depression and weight loss. Professor Edgar Jones also suggests that Ada’s way of dealing with early traumas might have led to what is clinically described as the ‘somatising’ (or suppressing) of a source of emotional distress, which would emerge in the form of a rash or bodily pains.
It has been suggested that her father suffered from epilepsy and that this, together with a bipolar condition, might help to explain his violent rages and swift recoveries, often – this was notably the case in a remarkable incident that took place in a Cephalonian monastery during the last months of Byron’s life – with a state of complete amnesia about what had taken place. But epilepsy does not, Professor Jones explains, usually pass from a father to a daughter. Ada’s own temperament, although highly erratic, was uncommonly sweet. The temper she showed as a little girl did not emerge in her adult life.
Possibly, she shared her father’s allergy to alcohol. Byron could drink wine with impunity, but not spirits. (The Cephalonian incident, during which Ada’s father barricaded himself into a room and hurled furniture at all who tried to enter it, was preceded by a great bout of gin-drinking.) The prescription given to her by the eminent Charles Locock for laudanum and claret as a cure for her ailments was probably not ideal. It is unclear whether, or how much, it exacerbated her condition. Ada herself blamed mesmerism at one point, which only shows how little she knew about the source of her affliction.
I am very grateful for the thoughts given to me on this perplexing topic by Professor Edgar Jones, by Dr Penny Sexton, by Dr Geoffrey Wong and by Dr Anthony Rockwell.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
All through the research and writing of this book, I’ve been supported and encouraged by goodwill the like of which I’ve never before experienced. It also helped that the Society of Authors very generously provided me with a grant and that the always generous Harry Ransom Center at Austin, Texas, provided a fellowship that enabled me to visit their collection. David McClay, formerly at the National Library of Scotland, and Mary Clapinson, who originally catalogued the Lovelace Byron Papers on loan to the Bodleian, gave more of their time than any mere biographer should expect. Thank you both, so much.
I am above all indebted to Lord Lytton and to Katy Loffman at Paper Lion, for gracious permission to read and quote freely from the Lovelace Byron Papers. Without this act of kindness, my whole project would have been in ruins.
In no particular order, a tremendous debt of thanks is due to:
Giuseppe Albano, Geoffrey Bond, Mark Bostridge, Robin Byron (13th Lord), Colin Harris, Henry Cobbold, John and Celia Child-Villiers, the Right Hon. Kenneth Clarke, the late Peter Cochran, Nora Crook, John Fuegi and Jo Francis, David Oldrey, Lord Zetland, Gillian, Lady Howard de Walden, Gillian O’Keefe, Professor Ursula Martin, Dr Christopher Hollings, Professor Betty Toole, Professor Richard Holmes, Sammy Jay, Stephen Wolfram, Doron Swade, Dana Kovarik, Dr Nick Booth, Jenny Childs at the Cadbury Research Collection, Lady Selina Hastings, Professor Samuel Baker, Professor Roger Louis, John and Virginia Murray, Fiona MacCarthy, Elizabeth Garver, Helen Symington at the NLS, Professor Graeme Segal and Dame
