A Female Genius: How Ada Lovelace Started the Computer Age by James Essinger Read Free Book Online Page A

poetry. But he had eventually found robust and reliable passionate love with a young Italian countess, Teresa Guiccioli, who was small and voluptuous, and who had auburn curls. She also reportedly had large and luminous eyes, a fresh, youthful face and a large bust that some thought was so out of proportion with her figure that it made her look dumpy.
    After Byron told Teresa he was leaving for Greece she pleaded with her poet lover to let her accompany him, but he refused. Bored, the romantic idea of helping to free the Greeks from the Ottoman Empire was his new grand passion. Soon after arriving in Missolonghi, Byron became ill with flu, which developed into a more severe fever.
    He died on Monday April 19 1824, cursing his doctors, although according to the account of his valet, the last words Byron actually spoke were: ‘Oh, my poor dear child! – my dear Ada! my God, could I have seen her! Give her my blessing… ’
    An enormous crowd viewed his funeral entourage, which consisted of forty-seven carriages passing through the streets of London. His body lay in state for two days in London, on July 9 and 10 1824.
    Byron’s friends led a campaign for him to be buried in Westminster Abbey in Poet’s Corner, as a tribute to the quality of his work. But these calls did not find favour and, instead, Byron, who had travelled so far both geographically and emotionally in his life, was buried only about six miles from his ancestral home of Newstead Abbey, in the Byron family vault at the church of St Mary Magdalen in a Nottingham village called Hucknall.
    Neither Lady Byron nor Ada attended the funeral. Ada did know of it, however, for her September 7 1824 ‘fryed fish ’letter above was edged in black in memory of the death of her father.
    George Noel Byron, the poet, had been the sixth Lord Byron. The poet’s cousin, a naval officer called George Anson Byron, inherited the baronetcy and became the seventh Lord Byron.
    This new Lord Byron became a good friend of Lady Byron, presumably because there was no further need for estrangement after Byron’s death. And George went with his family – taking along with him his own son and heir, yet another George, who was only eighteen months younger than Ada – to visit Lady Byron and Ada.
    Clearly Lady Byron was keen for the vacuum of ‘Lord Byron’ to be filled, and to encourage Ada’s idea of kinship. On September 13 1824, Ada wrote to George, a cousin several times removed, calling him her ‘dearest brother’, an affectionate letter whose ideas no doubt came from the adults around her.
    My dearest brother, for so my love I can justly call you. I have been considering what a great misfortune it is for me not to have brothers and Sisters but I look upon you as one that I can talk to as a brother or a Sister… and when you die, I shall have none that are so well suited to my age to talk to… If ever you come to settle with me for some time how happy will my time be… I can then show my affection and love in a thousand ways, your death would therefore be to me a very severe blow of grief…
    Mentioning her visit to the Hercules that had sailed her father to his death, she added
    I went to see papa’s ship and liked it very much but I should have liked it better if my brother George had been there…
    She had never met the boy, but these words no doubt helped pave the way to rapid normalisation of family relations, expunging the unpleasant ructions of the past.

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    In her early years of bringing Ada up, Lady Byron received financial help from her family. But in 1825, a great financial year for Lady Byron, she got the abundant sums of money she needed to live as she wanted to live and to bring Ada up in the style she wished to raise her daughter.
    By 1825, Lady Byron’s mother had died and she had inherited money from her. Lord Wentworth had passed away in 1815, and finally the funds, too, had become available, a decade later. Combined with her