All – all – in the wild version of events that Medora depicted and in which Annabella was now eager to believe, was the work of wicked Mrs Leigh. Did Medora’s presence in Paris not prove how things stood? It was to Byron’s wife that his dying child had now turned in her hour of need. It was his forgiving widow who had reached out to save Augusta’s abused and wantonly abandoned daughter from her deathbed.
Etc. No gothic novel could surpass the lurid version of Augusta Leigh’s misdoings that was now being circulated by a woman who had once been praised by Lord Byron for her absolute inability to utter an untruth.
The only person to whom Annabella delayed in speaking out was her own daughter.
Back at the beginning of the year 1841, Ada had been writing, with complete control of her wits, an essay about the connection between imagination and scientific thought. She was ready to describe the past six months as the happiest period of her life, a time when the twin deities of music and mathematics had held her in thrall. Of Medora, she knew only that the ever-charitable Lady Byron had taken a hapless daughter of Augusta Leigh’s under her wing in Paris. How typical of the Hen! ‘I quite revere & adore the Hen’s whole conduct & feelings respecting this singular & apparently unfortunate being,’ Ada wrote to her mother in early January, shortly after receiving the unknown Medora’s Christmas gift of a handmade red-and-gold pincushion. ‘It well paints your whole principle & character; – at least it does so to me.’
And then, the bombshell descended.
* Police suspicions about Fortunato Prandi’s return to Italy increased when it was reported that Prandi himself had not attended the conference. Possibly, Babbage was providing cover. Several years later, in an undated note in the Lovelace Byron Papers, Ada summoned Prandi to a secret midnight tête-à-tête at her London home, but the reason for it remains unknown.
* Medora was planning to draw out an advance against the deed. The £3,000 gifted by Augusta to her granddaughter was contingent upon the death of Lady Byron.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A C
UCKOO IN THE
N
EST
(1841–3)
But if you knew one half the harum-scarum extraordinary things I do, you would certainly incline to the idea that I have a Spell of some sort about me. I am positive that no She-Creature of my years could possibly attempt many of my everyday performances, with any impunity.
ADA LOVELACE TO WORONZOW GREIG,
31 DECEMBER 1841
During the year of 1840, Ada Lovelace and her husband began to be drawn apart, not by any lack of affection, but by their consuming and divided interests. Ada, while pursuing the elusive quarry of finite differences that brought her ever closer to understanding the intricate workings of Charles Babbage’s unbuilt Analytical Engine, remained deeply committed to music.
The year 1840 was when Ada decided, out of her own modestly lined pocket, to sponsor the education at the Royal Academy of Music of a 14-year-old Welsh harpist, John Thomas. (Thomas, who went on to become Queen Victoria’s harpist, gratefully named his daughter after his first patron.) Harp-playing occupied as much as half of every day for the young countess herself. Every new musical event was a must-do in a busy London calendar during a period when Lady Lovelace was dabbling in mesmerism (Anton Mesmer believed in a mysterious bodily fluid enabling the hypnotism of one person by another) while also acting as her mother’s scout for new areas in which to invest. On 11 March 1841, Ada was a thrilled observer of the brand-new atmospheric railway, in which Lady Byron had expressed an interest.*
William Lovelace, handsomely funded by the doting Hen’s judicious sales from the vast Wentworth estates (of which she held sole ownership), was meanwhile embarking on a lavish programme of architectural development in Surrey, Somerset and London. In 1840, while still living at Ockham, William bought East Horsley Place, the Barry-designed house owned by his Surrey neighbour William Currie. (Currie moved down the road to occupy his preferred second home at West Horsley.) In London, the Lovelaces’ elegant home in St James’s Square underwent a facelift major enough for Ada to have to move out into nearby lodgings during the early summer of 1842. During this same period, Lord Lovelace oversaw the ongoing transformation of his father’s simple woodland hunting box in north Somerset. Ashley Lodge was converted into Ashley Combe, a fairytale palace perched between two wooded flanks of cliffside that climb up to Exmoor’s heathland from the sweeping inlet of Hurlstone Bay. Inspired, it seems, by one of Byron’s favourite poems (Coleridge’s dreamlike Kubla Khan was written while the poet was exploring this ravishing corner of north Somerset), Ada’s favourite of all her husband’s architectural fantasies featured hanging gardens, balustraded terraces, winding tunnels and concealed bridges. It was – and remains, despite ruined gardens and a vanished house – a ravishing setting.
The news that arrived from Place Vendôme in the spring of 1841 shook a congenially independent marriage to its foundations, sparking what Ada described the following year as ‘a frightful crisis in my existence . . . Heaven knows what intense suffering & agony I have gone thro’; & how mad & how reckless & how desperate I have at times felt.’
The first bulletin, sent towards the end of the month, revealed what Ada now felt licensed to speak to her mother about as ‘the fact’ of her father’s incest. ‘I am not in the least astonished,’ she informed the disconcerted Hen on 27 February. ‘In fact you merely confirm what I have for years & years felt scarcely a doubt about, but should have considered it most improper in me to hint to you that I in any way suspected.’ Asked for the source of her knowledge, Ada grew evasive. ‘Perhaps I may
