For a married woman to ask her children’s married tutor to call on her alone and late at night was a clear signal of more than professional interest. Summoned to the bedroom-cum-office that Ada spoke of as her ‘sanctum’, Carpenter was made privy to further confidences about his young employer’s private life. By mid-December, the relationship was intimate enough for Ada to entreat him to cheer her with ‘a few kind lines – I need them’. Quoting these words back to her on 15 December, Carpenter asked permission to sign himself as ‘Your affectionate friend’.
It was here that the trouble began. Already promised £400 a year, Carpenter now felt sufficiently emboldened to lay out his requests to ‘the really kind friend which I believe you wish me to regard you’. He wanted a free house in which to entertain his friends, a horse of his own – presumably from the Ockham stud funded by Annabella – and the freedom to go to London to give lectures as and when he wished. Furthermore, he would only consider work that kept him within easy reach of the City. Remote Ashley Combe, where the King children were used to spending a blissful part of every year, was out of the question.
It may seem that Carpenter was asking for quite a lot. In his defence, he was no ordinary tutor. A published academic with the genuine promise of an appointment as the Fuller Professor of Physiology (1844–8) was justified in seeking some concessions for educating a trio of undisciplined children. (A governess, Miss Cooper, was independently recruited to act as nursery supervisor.)
Carpenter’s mistake lay, not in his demands, but in misreading Ada’s volatile personality. In January 1844, following one of the young countess’s sudden breakdowns in health, Carpenter did something – it seems he had already kissed her – at which she took offence. Icily, Ada indicated that he had stepped beyond his role. She had wished only to be friendly. Perhaps the question of his employment should be reconsidered.
Carpenter was both furious and alarmed. Without telling Ada (on whom he inflicted a lengthy defence of the absolute purity of his intentions), he elected to write separately and at considerable length (concision was not Dr Carpenter’s forte) both to her husband and her mother. Annabella was sufficiently displeased by his revelations to seek advice from Joanne Baillie about alternative teachers for her grandchildren. William Lovelace, offered Carpenter’s commiseration for having to deal with such a feckless wife, grew incandescent with rage. ‘I was completely stunned,’ an injured Carpenter told Ada on 19 January after reading her husband’s response. ‘Though I saw that I had made a great mistake, I could not see in what . . .’
Carpenter, thanks to Ada’s good-natured intervention on his behalf, was still offered the tutor’s post. The request for a free house at Ockham was confirmed, together with his generous salary. Gratitude, grudgingly, was expressed. ‘That you are a peculiar – very peculiar – specimen of the feminine race, you are yourself aware,’ Carpenter informed his future employer on 24 January. Resentment seeping from his pen, he assured Lady Lovelace that ‘the barriers’ of social position would never again be transgressed. Nevertheless, he owed her a debt of thanks.
Would not a word from you as to liberties I had even offered, damn me with Lord L. Lady B. and the world? I feel that you must have done your best for me and for yourself to have extricated me as you have done; and to lead to the continuance of the wish that the educational engagement should continue.
William Carpenter’s appointment as the Lovelace children’s tutor – a role in which he would in fact acquit himself quite well during his trial year – proved timely. His employment coincided with the time at which Ada’s brave words about her readiness to endure – and even to make a research subject of her physical suffering – were put to the test.
Ada’s health suddenly deteriorated during the midwinter of 1843–4. Dr Locock was shaken when he saw for the first time what he described as a ‘mad’ look in his patient’s eyes. ‘He told me that it was really peculiar, & horrible to a spectator,’ Ada confessed to her mother in an undated note. Put on a light diet and in a state of strict isolation, Ada acknowledged the need for such prudent measures when she found that she could not even cope with the stress of a short visit from a cherished family friend, the Yorkshire vicar Samuel Gamlen. ‘I could not bear it for more than 10 minutes,’ a wistful Ada admitted to her mother in a second undated note.
My brain then began to turn & twist, & my eyes to burn. I referred him [Gamlen] to you for everything about me . . . & merely said a few little facts as to the present . . . I cannot but weep over my inability to see so many who I would wish to see. It is sad, sad, sad to me.
Six weeks after Christmas 1843, Ada was still living in enforced solitude at St James’s Square. On 10 February 1844, while eager to visit Woronzow and Agnes Greig, she felt obliged to warn these dear friends not to be startled by the strangeness of her swollen features. William was piteously thanked for the worry that he expressed (‘What a kind kind mate ou is. Your sweetest letter (just received) has almost made me cry. It is so wise, yet so tender.’) But William himself was contributing to Ada’s fragility. ‘I do not feel I am fairly
