‘A new language is requisite to furnish terms strong enough to express my horror’: AAL to William Lovelace, 8 April 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 165, fols. 160–89.
‘it is impossible to know her without loving her – or to look into her mind without respecting all she has done’: Anna Jameson to AINB, 28 August 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 75.
Annabella confessed that the presentation of her protégée was nevertheless causing friction: AINB to Harriet Siddons, 7 August 1841, HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
‘I think he has bequeathed this task to me! . . . I have a duty to perform towards him’: AAL to ANIB, n.d. 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42.
‘You know I am a d—d odd animal!’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 31 December 1841, MSBY Dep. c. 367, MSBY-9.
‘I am quite in a fuss about my mathematics, for I am much in want of a lift at the moment’: AAL to Augustus De Morgan, June 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron, box 170.
‘My intended journey to Town is only on particular business’: AAL to Augustus De Morgan, 27 October 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron, box 170.
Seemingly bewitched by the ‘waywardness, beauty & intangibility’: Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace: Byron’s Legitimate Daughter (John Murray, 1977), p. 161.
‘a naughty sick Bird’: AAL to William Lovelace, n.d. June 1841, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166, fols. 50–100.
The results, judging by Dr Kay’s unpublished journal: the unpublished journal is held in the Kay-Shuttleworth Papers at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, ref. 219, 1/25.
‘tho really what use an old Crow would be to me I know not’: AAL to William Lovelace, n.d. July 1842, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166, fols. 50–100.
In the spring of 1842, Ada’s letters sound as though she has suddenly vaulted into our times: AAL to William Lovelace, n.d. but recording her activity, Thursday, half past four, ibid.
‘. . . and the more scope I have in prospect for it, the more settled, calm & happy, does my mind become’: AAL to William Lovelace in two letters written during the spring and summer of 1842, ibid. ‘And if so, it will be poetry of an unique kind’: n.d. ibid.
she described him to Lovelace as allegedly ‘very handsome and attractive’: AAL to William Lovelace, n.d. July 1842, ibid.
Her affectionate message of congratulation, so he told a gratified Ada: Sir George Crauford to AAL, 3 November 1842, Dep. Lovelace Byron 168, fols. 199–200.
‘I could not read of that meeting without great pain’: Both letters are in Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), p. 362.
‘And then came all sorts of vituperations’: AAL to AINB, [23] July 1842, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fols. 56–8.
‘I cannot bear to think of the folly’: AAL to WL, n.d. July 1842, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166.
It was sad that ‘a nice stingy Old Hen, (especially about horses . . .)’ should be feeling bereft: AAL to AINB, 25 July 1842, written two days after Medora’s departure to France, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fols. 58–60.
‘I know you would prefer such a state of things . . . dear Mate’: AAL to William Lovelace, n.d. July 1842, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166, fols. 50–100.
‘Time must show. To say the truth, I have less ambition than I had’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 16 December 1842, MSBY Dep. c. 367, MSBY-9.
‘Wheatstone has been with me a long while today’: AAL to William Lovelace, n.d. December 1842, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166, fols. 50–100.
Chapter Seventeen: My Fair Interpretress (7)
‘so happy that I can scarcely hold my pen,’ wrote Hester to Robert and Louisa Noel: Hester King Jr to Robert Noel, 8 February 1843 (WP, Add MS 54089).
‘or if you really cannot (tho I am sure you can, if you will) stay so long’: AAL to Charles Babbage, 8 February 1843, BL, Add MS B37192.
‘the Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines” ’: From Note A, in Ada’s Translator’s Notes to M. Menabrea’s Memoirs, Scientific Memoirs, Selected from the Transactions of Foreign Academies of Science and Learned Societies and from Foreign Journals, ed. by Richard Taylor (1843), vol. 3, p. 697. Further quotations from the article and translation in Chapter 17 will provide only the relevant page number.
‘Babbage did not know what he had; Ada started to see glimpses and successfully described them’: Stephen Wolfram, Idea Makers: Personal Perspectives on the Lives & Ideas of Some Notable People (Wolfram Media, 2016), p. 96.
She had taken the story of how she had been brutally cast aside by Lady Byron: Selina Doyle to AINB, 21 March 1843, Dep. Lovelace Byron 68, fols. 123–4.
‘You have but one course to pursue’: AAL to EML, 24 March 1843, Dep. Lovelace Byron 172, fol. 204.
‘Elle est plus tranquille aujourd’hui et prête a faire tout ce qu’on veut’: Selina Doyle to AINB, 25 March 1843, Dep. Lovelace Byron 68, fol. 124.
‘I think I then told you that I believed her reason was not sound’: Louisa Barwell to AINB, 9 April 1843, Dep Lovelace Byron 63.
Medora recorded that the meek and somewhat bewitched Dr King had been both intimidating and abusive: Charles Mackay (ed.), Elizabeth Medora Leigh: A History and an Autobiography (R. Bentley, 1869), pp. 149–50. Mackay was the father of the novelist Marie Corelli.
‘I will have it well, & fully done; or not at all’: All of the quotations in this paragraph and its predecessor are taken from the 1843 June– August letters published (but with rationalised dates that often conflict with Ada’s own) in Betty Toole’s Ada: The Enchantress of Numbers (Strawberry Press, 1992), Ch. 10.
‘quite thunderstruck at the power of the writing’: AAL to Babbage [n.d. August] 1843, BL, Add MS B37192.
‘Can it be the daughter who eloped with Trevanion who married her sister?’: Hobhouse’s Diary, 26 July 1843. See note on p. 487.
‘I once more remind you that I am your child’: See note to p. 271 above, ‘Medora recorded . . .’ The letter from Elizabeth Medora Leigh to Augusta
