Ada already possessed a skill with words that enabled her to encircle, bewilder and trounce poor Dr King. While sweetly assenting to the prudence of controlling that dangerous imagination of hers, Miss Byron invited him to consider the worrying vacancy that might be created by the sudden extinction of any source of excitement. How fortunate that science offered a better solution – as she was about to explain:
[For] nothing but very close & intense application to subjects of a scientific nature now seems to keep my imagination from running wild, or to stop up the void which seems to be left in my mind from a want of excitement. I am most thankful that this strong source of interest does seem to be supplied to me now almost providentially, & think it a duty vigorously to use the resources thus as it were pointed out to me.
And on Ada smoothly passed, requesting Dr King to be so gracious as to counsel her as to the best ‘plan’ of study: ‘I may say that I have time at my command, & that I am willing to take any trouble.’ Dr King, in short, was to advise, but not control. His pupil would herself make the final decision about what she wished to learn from him. As to the ultimate purpose of her researches, she would keep that secret to herself.
Ada’s reference to her new and unexpected access to ‘subjects of a scientific nature’ held the clue – had Dr King been able to follow it – to what had happened. In February that year, she had found a new and sympathetic mentor in her mother’s friend Mary Somerville, a slight, smiling, pink-cheeked Scotswoman who was recognised to be one of the most brilliant expositors of science in England. The following month, Ada – for once, without her mother – attended a party held at the London home of one of Mary Somerville’s closest friends. His name was Charles Babbage.
* Had Henry Trevanion known of the arrangements restricting Mrs Leigh’s access to funds that were held in trust, he might have thought twice. Even so, Georgiana’s marriage settlement proved substantial enough for him to raise £8,332 against it in 1836.
* ‘Those who, like myself, are animated by an ever-new succession of hopeful visions, have dangers of a different kind to contend with . . .’ Annabella wrote to Lizzie Siddons on 13 June 1834, adding revealingly that: ‘my states of depression . . . arise, not from apprehension of the future, but from regret for the past’. (HRC, bound vol.1, Byron Collection)
* Augusta’s settlement was predicated upon the always sickly Lady Byron’s early death. None of the money could be released until that eventuality.
† Georgiana, for reasons that remain obscure, was always a co-operative member of the trio. By telling Medora that she was not the daughter of Colonel Leigh, she seemingly intended the girl to feel less guilt about sleeping with Henry Trevanion, her own sister’s husband.
* Flora’s father was one of Lady Byron’s closest friends and advisors. He was among the initial three trustees she later appointed to protect her personal papers from scrutiny. On his death, Mr Davison was replaced in that role by Henry Bathurst.
* The Noel-Bakers are landowners in modern Evia.
* Fanny Smith was the child of Selina Doyle’s handsome second brother, Charles (‘Carlo’), and an Indian begum whom he was not able to marry. Fanny had known Ada since 1828, when Miss Smith promised to practise flying with her at Bifrons. Fanny became like a second daughter to Annabella during the Fordhook years. Later, she married Edward Noel.
† The abrupt termination of William Turner’s employment as a shorthand teacher suggests that he was Ada’s first beau, although the culprit was never named.
* Evidence that gossip had spread appears in The New York Mirror of 1833, which told its readers that ‘Ada Byron, the sole daughter of the “noble bard”, is the most coarse and vulgar woman in England’. Small wonder that Annabella was dismayed.
† On 27 April 1834, Ada referred to her state of mind ‘this very day last year– believing myself most noble & virtuous, [while] I was made up of deceit & selfishness’ (AAB to Mrs William King, 27 April 1834, Lovelace Byron Papers: the italics are my own).
* On 22 July 1833, Annabella confided to Harriet Siddons that ‘Self-will has involved one to whose moral and religious welfare all my efforts have been directed, in evils of the greatest magnitude, such as must bring retribution . . .’ Reference to Mrs Leigh rather than to Ada’s recent misdemeanours is clear from the fact that she turned calmly to Ada in the next paragraph: ‘Ada is quite well. We shall move soon . . .’ It remains unclear what Augusta Leigh had done to incur Lady Byron’s wrath on this particular occasion (HRC, bound vol. 1, Byron Collection).
* The higher the sun, the more of a rainbow’s circle do we perceive. At a certain height, where the horizon presents no cut-off, the whole circle (caused by varied wavelengths of light being refracted off raindrops) becomes visible.
CHAPTER TWELVE
M
ATHEMATICAL
F
RIENDSHIPS
(1834–5)
Twelve years older than Lady Byron, Mary Somerville was fifty-four when Ada first visited the damp little house beside Chelsea Hospital where the Somerville family had resided, on and off, for the past fifteen years. Here, having recently returned from a heady year of being fêted in Paris, Mrs Somerville offered her
