Lady Lovelace finally admitted to her mother that she would never have chosen to bear a child: AAL to AINB, 12 December 1840, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 194–5.
‘to say the truth I do not think Mr H. Fellows knows much about the Trinity or the Unity either’: AAK to AINB, n.d. September 1837, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41.
It was in the same playful tone as in her letters to Fanny that Annabella wrote to Ada from Germany: Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), p. 374.
In June 1837, Ada fired off an opinionated letter to Mrs Somerville: AAL to Mary Somerville, 22 June 1837, MSBY, Dep c. 367, folder MSBY-3.
‘a very bright light a good way farther on’: AAL to Charles Babbage, 16 February 1840, BL, Add MS B37192.
‘I hope you are bearing me in mind’: AAL to Charles Babbage, 16 February 1840, BL, Add MS B37192.
Writing to her absent mother that month: AAL to AINB, 20 October 1840, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 170–4.
Chapter Fifteen: Ambitions and Delusions (1840–1)
‘The discovery of the Analytical Engine is so much in advance of my own country’: Charles Babbage to Angelo Sismondo, in Anthony Hyman, Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer (Princeton University Press, 1982), p.185.
‘Festina lente,’ De Morgan reproved her on 15 September 1840: All Augustus De Morgan’s correspondence with Ada is in box 170 in the Lovelace Byron Papers. I am indebted to Christopher Hollings and Adrian Rice for early use of their transcriptions, now available online, and to Ursula Martin for introducing me to the first papers that have seriously examined Ada’s mathematics. These are now online. The most relevant to De Morgan’s influence is: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17498430.2017.1325297
‘I work on very slowly,’ Ada sighed to her mother: AAL to AINB, 21 November 1840, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41.
‘I have materially altered my mind on this subject,’ she confessed to her tutor: AAL to Augustus De Morgan, 22 December 1840, see note to p. 224 above, ‘Festina lente’.
‘the importance of not being in a hurry’: AAL to Augustus De Morgan, 10 November 1840, see note to p. 224 above, ‘Festina lente’.
‘The moving force of mathematical invention is not reasoning but imagination’: Robert Perceval Graves, Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton (3 vols., Hodges, Figgis, 1889), vol. 3, p. 219.
‘Imagination is the Discovering faculty’: AAL, ‘Essay on Imagination’, 5 January 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 175, fol. 231.
‘I feel bound to tell you that the power that Lady L[ovelace]’s thinking has always shewn’: Augustus De Morgan to AINB, 21 January 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 67, fol. 9.
‘. . . the less I have habitually to do with children the better’: AAL to AINB, 12 December 1840, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 194–5.
‘His affable, communicative, manly & I may say elegant manners, charm people much’: AAL to Louisa Barwell, 5 January 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 63.
‘You have always been a kind & real & most invaluable friend to me’: AAL to Charles Babbage, 12 January 1841, BL, Add MS B37192.
‘one of the most logical, sober-minded, cool, pieces of composition (I believe) that I ever penned; the result of much accurate, matter-of-fact, reflection & study’: AAL to AINB, 6 February 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fols. 12–16.
‘The services which I am so willing to render are not asked . . . A Right Honourable wall surrounds me’: AINB to Ralph King, 7 September 1855, Dep. Lovelace Byron 61.
And thus, as she argued in a long and earnest letter to Harriet Siddons: AINB to Harriet Siddons, 11 February 1836, HRC, Bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
‘The great thing is not to delay as the people are starving’: The quotations are from David Herbert, Lady Byron and Earl Shilton (Hinckley & District Museum, 1997), pp. 40–1. More detail appears in Harriet Martineau’s unpublished correspondence and notes. These were collected from various fellow reformers in 1860, following Lady Byron’s death (CRL, XHM121–31).
‘So many mothers came that it seemed each child had two Mothers!’: AINB to Harriet Siddons, June–July 1840, HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
Mary Montgomery was willing to view Mrs Leigh as ‘one of the wickedest woman ever born’: Mary Montgomery was quoted in Sophia De Morgan’s long letter of record to Lord Wentworth about his mother and grandmother, 9 April 1875, Dep. Lovelace Byron 187, fols. 62–76.
‘I can believe – alas! that I should confess it – even to you’: Anna Jameson to AINB, 13 December 1840, Dep. Lovelace Byron 75. Mrs Jameson seems to have burnt, as requested, Lady Byron’s description of Augusta Leigh’s misdoings.
‘She [Medora] knows that the throat of my conscience is small’: AINB to Lady Olivia Acheson, in Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), pp. 353–4.
‘I would save you, if it be not too late, from adding the guilt of her death to that of her birth. Leave her in peace!’: AINB to AL, 20 January 1841, WP, Add MS 31037.
‘It well paints your whole principle & character; – at least it does so to me’: AAL to AINB, 11 January 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fols. 8–11.
Chapter Sixteen: A Cuckoo in the Nest (1841–3)
‘But if you knew one half the harum-scarum extraordinary things I do’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 31 December 1841, MSBY, Dep. c. 367, MSBY-9.
Ada described the following year as ‘a frightful crisis in my existence’: AAL to WL, n.d. April 1842, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166, fols. 1–49. Much of the letter was devoted to explaining Ada’s newly discovered vocation (‘poetry, in conjunction with musical composition, must be my destiny’), while warning her husband not to impede it.
‘I should tell you that I did not suspect the daughter as being the result of it [the incest]’: AAL to AINB, 3 March 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fols. 28–30. The eight-day gap between this letter and Annabella’s revelation of incest on 23 February suggests that Ada was answering a second revelation, concerning Medora’s parentage. This would explain the more challenging and sceptical tone of Ada’s second letter.
‘Indeed
