‘Nobody’ she [Lady Byron] said, ‘knew him as I did’: Frances Kemble, Records of a Girlhood (Henry Holt, 1880), pp. 167–8.
‘to a class peculiarly interesting to him’: ibid.
‘At such a testimony I started up,’ Lady Byron admitted: The quotations here are from Ethel Coburn Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Constable, 1929), in the account of the meeting which she gives on pp. 408–10. Her description of the encounter remains the most balanced of the many in existence.
‘I have ever entertained of yr kindness to my Sister & several members of her unfortunate family’: Lady Chichester to AINB, 25 May 1856, Dep. Lovelace Byron 65, fols. 251–3. Ralph Lovelace alluded to this letter in Astarte, in order to demonstrate the high regard in which his grandmother had been held by Augusta’s family. Mary Chichester was Augusta’s widowed half-sister.
‘I could not hear distinctly,’ Emily wrote: Emily Leigh to AINB, n.d. May 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 85.
‘I think we shall let our house in May’: AAL to AINB, 10 December 1850, Betty Toole, Ada: The Enchantress of Numbers (Strawberry Press, 1992), p. 377.
‘From the Baron’s account she [Miss Ada Byron] must be perfection’: Sir Richard Ford to [name unknown] Addington, n.d. June 1835, Rowland Prothero (ed.), Letters of Richard Ford (John Murray, 1905), p. 185.
‘to talk over the wonderful combinations in your letter’ . . . he imagined ‘making a book’ to be like ‘living at the brink of a precipice’: Sir Richard Ford to AAL, 13 and 27 January 1851, Dep Lovelace Byron 171, fols. 129–130.
‘in order for your influence in causing them to be followed’: Charles Babbage to AAL, 13 January 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 168.
‘a visit from your own Lady-Bird will be sufficient’: Charles Babbage to AAL, 13 May 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 168.
‘that hour of agony’: AINB to William Lovelace, 9 January 1853, Dep. Lovelace Byron 46, fols. 257–9.
‘disease itself was to be looked upon as a blessing to my daughter’: AINB to WL, ibid.
‘your conduct with regard to me since June 19 1851’: AAL to WL, 11 December 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 46, fols. 236–9.
‘I never remember to have quitted you with so much regret’: AAL to AINB, 3 August and 10 August 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43.
‘Pray do not be angry’: AAL to AINB, 10 April 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 44.
‘Life is so difficult’: AAL to AINB, 16 October 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43.
Chapter Twenty-two: Rainbow’s End (1851–2)
The experiment had greatly intrigued him, and he described it with scientific care: Sir David Brewster, diary entry for 21 October 1851, in Margaret Gordon, The Home Life of Sir David Brewster (D. Douglas, 1869), p. 254.
‘Have patience . . . yet a little longer’: AAL to AINB, 1 September 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43.
‘marching in irresistible power to the sound of Music’: AAL to AINB, 29 October 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43.
‘What a very odd mind Byron’s is!’ AAL to AINB, 13 November 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 43.
‘unless by yr own wish.’ AAL to Byron Ockham, 15 November 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 167, fol. 10.
‘whatever she likes best’: AAL to Agnes Greig, 29 August 1851, MSBY, Dep. c 367, folder MSBY-10.
wearing the ‘Albanian’ uniform in which – so a fond wife fancied – William always looked his most Byronic: AAL to AIK, 22 and 28 November 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 167, fols. 238–43.
‘how handsome and admired yr daughter will be!’: AAL to WL, n.d. December 1851, Dep. Lovelace Byron 166, fols. 126–85.
‘The marks of reduction & suffering were very strong’: SL to AINB, 4 March 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 89.
‘I have an interest in Ada’: SL to AINB, 30 April 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 89.
‘Oh I am such a sick wretch!’: AAL to AINB, from letters written on 4, 12 and 21 April 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 44.
Ada was threatened with a personal visit on 21 April ‘unless I hear there is increment’: A surprising number of the tipsters’ scrawls survived Lady Byron’s fierce pruning of the archive. I have also drawn on DLM’s detailed notes on tipping and racing notes in the original, pre-Bodleian collection of Lovelace Papers, since I could not identify every item to which she referred in Dep. Lovelace Byron 172, fols. 30–60.
‘Pray let her Ladyship understand in as certain a manner as can be supposed . . .’: ibid.
‘tenderness in a measure’: AINB to Emily Fitzhugh, 9 June 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 69, fols. 118–269, in the form of a journal.
‘such a source of comfort and happiness’: Charles Locock to William Lovelace, 20 August 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 173, fols. 1–25. The letter was later copied out by Annabella for the benefit of her lawyers.
‘so gentle and kind’: AIK to RGK, 3 August 1852, WP, Add MS 54093.
‘a Father’s love to bring her to Christ’: AINB to Agnes Greig, n.d. 1852, MSBY Dep c. 367, folder MSBY-7.
‘It is very amusing for some people are so indescribably unlucky with their horses’: Anne Isabella King to AAL, 18 August 1852, WP, Add MS 54091.
‘Yet my heart yearns towards Lady Byron’: WL to Woronzow Greig, 20 August, 1852, MSBY Dep c. 368, folder MSBY-1.
‘It is fortunate that Lady Byron has been domiciled with us during this time’: William Lovelace, from 6 Great Cumberland Place, to Lady Hester King Sr, 27 November 1852, LKC.
Chapter Twenty-three: Life after Ada (1852–3)
‘The Rainbow’: Ada’s sonnet was inscribed on the 1854 monument that her mother ordered to be erected in a remote corner of the churchyard at Kirkby Mallory. A few (silently corrected here) errors in punctuation, together with the misdating of Ada’s birth to 27 December 1816 and the alteration of her name from ‘Augusta Ada’ to ‘Ada Augusta’, indicate that Lady Byron herself never saw the completed monument. It was engraved with a biblical quotation that either Ada or her mother (or both) picked out before her death. The most relevant phrase was the final one: ‘And if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.’ (James 5:15). The shrine takes the shape of a niched altar and is now rather neglected.
