At the very least, he bore testimony to ‘a most indomitable industry . . .’: AAL to AINB, n.d., but probably the first week of August 1843, DLM transcript.
‘as good a passport to posterity (if I am to have one) as “the wife of Byron” ’: AINB to AAL, n.d. 1843, ibid.
A new and ‘very frightful’ crisis in her health: ibid.
Back at Ockham, Ada composed a fourteen-page letter: AAL to Charles Babbage, n.d. August 1843, BL, Add MS B37192.
‘that horrible problem – the three bodies’: Charles Babbage to AAL, Dep. Lovelace Byron 168, fols. 49–50 (all Babbage’s letters to AAL are in this section).
Chapter Eighteen: The Enchantress (1843–4)
‘Science is no longer a lifeless abstraction’: Michael Garvey, The Silent Revolution: or The Future effects of Steam and Electricity upon the Condition of Mankind (W. and F. G. Cash, 1852), p. 3.
‘I don’t the least mind all I have suffered’: AAL to Sophia De Morgan, 21 December 184[3], Dep. Lovelace Byron 171, fols. 16–17. Betty Toole, in Ada: The Enchantress of Numbers (Strawberry Press, 1992), suggests 1844, but 1843 sits better with a reference to the bad effects of intensive mathematical work (the Menabrea ‘Notes’) undertaken six months earlier.
‘as to the microscopical structure and changes in the brain, nervous matter, & also in the blood’: AAL to Robert Noel, 9 August 1843, Dep. Lovelace Byron 173, fols. 155–8.
She had also spoken mysteriously of ‘present troubles’: W. B. Carpenter to AAL, 27 November 1843, Dep. Lovelace Byron 169, fols. 119–24.
Annabella was sufficiently displeased by his revelations: Joanna Baillie to AINB, 19 December 1843, Dep. Lovelace Byron 62.
‘I was completely stunned’: W. B. Carpenter to AAL, 24 January 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 169, fols. 119–24.
‘Would not a word from you as to liberties I had even offered’: W. B. Carpenter to AAL, ibid.
‘My brain then began to turn & twist’: AAL to AINB, 5 p.m. Monday, n.d. [early 1844], DLM transcript.
‘What a kind kind mate ou is’: AAL to William Lovelace, n.d. [early 1844], Dep. Lovelace Byron 166, fols. 101–25. Toole, op.cit., suggests 1845 or 1846.
‘I do not feel I am fairly dealt with in this’: AAL to William Lovelace, 10 April 1844, ibid.
‘an independent & skilful swimmer . . .’: AAL to William Lovelace, 14 August 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166.
‘This is my year of accidents’: AAL to William Lovelace, 15 August 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166.
In fact, Miss Martineau might herself benefit from the advice of a young lady who now wrote with brimming confidence of ‘my advancing studies on the nervous system’: AAL to AINB, 10 October 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fol. 150.
Lady Byron had been ‘more white and tremulously weak than I had ever seen her’: Anna Jameson to Catherine Sedgwick, July 1845, Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers, Coll. 2, Massachusetts Historical Society.
Ada, while persuaded that the ‘many exciting expeditions, and irregular amusements’: AAL to AINB, 10 October 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fol. 150.
‘I think Dr Carpenter is on the right track’: AINB to AAL, 20 November 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 55, fols. 126–85.
a frame so susceptible that it is an experimental laboratory: AAL to AINB, 11 November 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 42, fol. 150.
‘. . . if I can take a certain standing in the course of the next few years’: AAL to William Lovelace, 29 November 1844, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166.
‘that Enchantress who has thrown her magical spell around the most abstract of Sciences’: Charles Babbage to Michael Faraday, 9 September 1843, Frank L. James (ed.), Correspondence of Michael Faraday 6 vols. (Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1996), vol. 3.
Presenting herself to Faraday as ‘the bride of science’: Michael Faraday’s letters to Ada can be found in Dep. Lovelace Byron 171, fols. 44–53 and in Henry Bence Jones, Life & Letters of Michael Faraday (Longmans, Green and Co, 1870). Ada’s letters to Faraday are published in Frank L. James (ed.), Correspondence of Michael Faraday, 6 vols. (Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1996), vol. 3.
‘With Many Many Thanks’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 15 November 1844, MSBY, Dep. c. 367 MSBY-9.
‘I really have become as much tied to a profession’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 5 December 1844, ibid.
Chapter Nineteen: The Lady from Porlock (1844–9)
Born at Fyne Court, Crosse was running the family estate: The best account of Crosse and his family is given by Brian Wright, Andrew Crosse and the Mite that Shook the World: The Life and Work of an Electrical Pioneer (Matador, 2015).
His wife’s undisciplined habits: WL’s letters to ANIB in the autumn of 1844 are in Dep. Lovelace Byron 46.
He did not, Ada was pleased to announce, regard her ideas as ‘mere enthusiasm’: AAL’s letters to her husband about the Fyne Court visit are in Dep. Lovelace Byron 166.
Her mother, she told Grieg, had ‘quite chuckled’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 5 December 1844, Betty Toole, Ada: The Enchantress of Numbers (Strawberry Press, 1992), pp. 305–6. AAL’s letters to Greig in 1844–5 are in MSBY, Dep. c. 367, MSBY-9.
‘He is a good & just man. He is a son to me . . . But it has been a hopeless case . . .’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 4 February 1845, in Toole, op. cit., pp. 313–14.
‘quite unconnected with any of my own’: AAL to Woronzow Greig, 12 February 1845 MSBY, Dep. c. 367, MSBY-9.
capable of the ‘enormous and continued labour’ required for scientific work: James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (University of Chicago, 2000), p. 242.
‘habitually, in remembrance of the many delightful & improving hours we have jointly passed in various literary pursuits’: Ada’s bequest to John Crosse, Dep. Lovelace Byron 175, fol. 161.
‘I never saw a child to whom a firm, cheerful & tender influence was more wanting’: Anna Jameson to AINB, 3 January 1845, Dep. Lovelace Byron 75.
‘You poor dear patient thing’: WL to AAL, 30 August 1845, DLM–17 transcript.
‘one of the saddest’: WL
