1 00:00:13,860 --> 00:00:18,450 Augusta Ada Byron was Sunday's child. 2 00:00:18,450 --> 00:00:25,895 Born exactly 200 years ago today, into a chaotic household on the edge of violence. 3 00:00:25,895 --> 00:00:33,060 Ada's mother, Annabella Milbank, came to London at the age of 19 for the season. 4 00:00:33,060 --> 00:00:39,697 She was pretty, kind, intellectually gifted, particularly in mathematics, 5 00:00:39,697 --> 00:00:44,794 she was a future heiress who was unimpressed by the superficial 6 00:00:44,794 --> 00:00:49,697 finery of her class, where she had a battalion of suitors and 7 00:00:49,697 --> 00:00:54,246 their mothers in Regency London that year, 1812. 8 00:00:54,246 --> 00:00:59,325 Enter with dramatic limp, handsome, romantic Mad Bad Byron, 9 00:00:59,325 --> 00:01:04,969 24 years old, who had just published Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, 10 00:01:04,969 --> 00:01:10,440 and woke up one morning, as he said, to find himself famous. 11 00:01:10,440 --> 00:01:13,960 Regency women who previously ignored Byron, 12 00:01:13,960 --> 00:01:18,480 a minor aristocrat, were suddenly fawning all over him. 13 00:01:18,480 --> 00:01:25,340 Watching this at a fashionable waltz, Lady Byron 14 00:01:25,340 --> 00:01:29,500 looked at these women and lo and behold called Byron-mania, 15 00:01:29,500 --> 00:01:33,670 she asked if human nature would be cast anew because of this man. 16 00:01:33,670 --> 00:01:37,900 Quote, then grant me Jove to wear some other shape, and 17 00:01:37,900 --> 00:01:41,230 be anything except an ape. 18 00:01:41,230 --> 00:01:46,400 Byron proposed to her that year through his great friend, Annabella's Aunt, 19 00:01:46,400 --> 00:01:48,200 Lady Melbourne. 20 00:01:48,200 --> 00:01:50,070 They'd only met once or twice, 21 00:01:50,070 --> 00:01:53,800 I don't even know if Lord Byron meant the proposal. 22 00:01:53,800 --> 00:02:00,610 Lady Melbourne couldn't resist proposing for him in the most flowery terms. 23 00:02:00,610 --> 00:02:02,465 Annabella refused. 24 00:02:02,465 --> 00:02:07,030 It took Annabella two more years to admit her love for Byron and for 25 00:02:07,030 --> 00:02:08,940 the two to become engaged. 26 00:02:08,940 --> 00:02:13,250 But in the meantime, Byron had had an incestuous affair 27 00:02:13,250 --> 00:02:18,080 with his married half sister, the honorable Augusta Lee, and 28 00:02:18,080 --> 00:02:22,720 they had had a daughter recently named Medora Lee. 29 00:02:22,720 --> 00:02:28,104 His sister Augusta and Annabella's aunt, 30 00:02:28,104 --> 00:02:32,730 Lady Melbourne, urged Byron to marry because rumors were 31 00:02:32,730 --> 00:02:36,520 spreading through London about this incest. 32 00:02:36,520 --> 00:02:42,390 They didn't particularly want him to marry Lady Byron, Annabella Milbank, 33 00:02:42,390 --> 00:02:47,550 but other women had refused that year and she didn't. 34 00:02:47,550 --> 00:02:51,440 She was in love and she accepted. 35 00:02:51,440 --> 00:02:58,090 They met maybe three or four times, I think they once touched hands. 36 00:02:58,090 --> 00:03:03,580 From the minute Anabella stepped into the wedding carriage on that cold January 37 00:03:03,580 --> 00:03:09,060 morning in 1815, Byron's cruelty commenced. 38 00:03:09,060 --> 00:03:13,170 Lord Byron told his wife, you thought I loved you, I'll show you, and 39 00:03:13,170 --> 00:03:14,730 he certainly did. 40 00:03:14,730 --> 00:03:20,900 With an air of mystery he told her that had she married him when her aunt 41 00:03:20,900 --> 00:03:25,880 had first asked for him, first proposed, things would have been different. 42 00:03:25,880 --> 00:03:30,490 Without telling her why, he seemed to cast the blame for 43 00:03:30,490 --> 00:03:33,160 his incest on his young wife. 44 00:03:33,160 --> 00:03:37,397 His mental cruelty was punctuated, as it often is, 45 00:03:37,397 --> 00:03:42,116 by teasing regrets, loving moments, plenty of sex, and 46 00:03:42,116 --> 00:03:48,020 then relapse into cruelty during the one year that they lived together. 47 00:03:48,020 --> 00:03:52,597 His behavior brought Sister Augusta back into the household by 48 00:03:52,597 --> 00:03:57,098 Lady Byron's request in the seventh month of her pregnancy. 49 00:03:57,098 --> 00:04:01,503 For Annabella believed with Byron's sister present he 50 00:04:01,503 --> 00:04:05,730 would not act out as outrageously as he said he would. 51 00:04:05,730 --> 00:04:09,917 For example, he said he would bring a woman into the house and 52 00:04:09,917 --> 00:04:11,897 copulate as she gave birth. 53 00:04:11,897 --> 00:04:17,312 Still, even with Augusta present, while Lady Byron was in labor, 54 00:04:17,312 --> 00:04:24,075 Lord Byron made as much noise as possible, throwing bottles and furniture around. 55 00:04:24,075 --> 00:04:27,352 He went in and told his wife that her mother, 56 00:04:27,352 --> 00:04:32,480 very seriously ill at the time, had died, which was not true. 57 00:04:32,480 --> 00:04:34,820 He asked if the child were dead, and 58 00:04:34,820 --> 00:04:40,800 later on seeing his daughter called Ada his perfect instrument of torture. 59 00:04:40,800 --> 00:04:46,830 After two weeks, he refused to see Ada at all, and soon after that, 60 00:04:46,830 --> 00:04:51,580 wrote to Lady Byron telling her to take Ada and leave the house as soon as 61 00:04:51,580 --> 00:04:56,520 possible, as he was closing the establishment and going abroad. 62 00:04:56,520 --> 00:04:58,710 Actually, after she left, 63 00:04:58,710 --> 00:05:04,760 he stayed there with his sister Augusta at 13 Piccadilly Terrace. 64 00:05:04,760 --> 00:05:09,010 Apparently, Lord Byron thought that loving him as she did, and 65 00:05:09,010 --> 00:05:11,960 she really did, Lady Byron would simply, 66 00:05:11,960 --> 00:05:16,270 as Annabella's former governor said, live with her parents. 67 00:05:16,270 --> 00:05:22,490 Pining for him quietly raised their daughter Ada, and he would go his own way. 68 00:05:22,490 --> 00:05:27,150 I'm sure he's not the only man who's ever had this fantasy. 69 00:05:27,150 --> 00:05:33,100 It was only after 24 year old Annabelle swiftly requested a legal 70 00:05:33,100 --> 00:05:38,630 separation of bed and board, that Byron attempted to win her back. 71 00:05:38,630 --> 00:05:43,780 For the Regency elite were again whispering, and now they were saying that 72 00:05:43,780 --> 00:05:49,830 incest might have been the cause for this break up, but it wasn't, it wasn't. 73 00:05:49,830 --> 00:05:53,130 Mental cruelty and Lady Byron's fear for 74 00:05:53,130 --> 00:05:59,450 her daughter's safety under the domination of erratic Byron 75 00:05:59,450 --> 00:06:05,340 were the main reasons she wished to be legally free of her husband's control. 76 00:06:05,340 --> 00:06:10,070 As Byron resisted, society added the rumor of sodomy to 77 00:06:10,070 --> 00:06:15,730 a growing list that painted Byron madder and badder than he wished. 78 00:06:15,730 --> 00:06:20,630 To put an end to Annabella seeking a legal separation, 79 00:06:20,630 --> 00:06:23,920 Byron employed his glorious words. 80 00:06:23,920 --> 00:06:27,435 In a rush of seemingly heartfelt letters, 81 00:06:27,435 --> 00:06:33,393 as well as in the first poem he ever directed to his wife, fair thee well, 82 00:06:33,393 --> 00:06:39,670 fair thee well, if forever, if forever, still fair thee well. 83 00:06:39,670 --> 00:06:43,540 Lady Byron well knew that fair thee well and 84 00:06:43,540 --> 00:06:48,460 this sudden rush of beautiful rush of love letters were insincere. 85 00:06:48,460 --> 00:06:50,820 Byron used words, she said, 86 00:06:50,820 --> 00:06:56,360 the way his hero Napoleon used his troops, for conquest. 87 00:06:56,360 --> 00:06:59,490 Also her lawyers had educated her. 88 00:06:59,490 --> 00:07:04,740 If she responded to Byron's sudden rush of love letters or to his poem, 89 00:07:04,740 --> 00:07:10,250 it would be what English law in those days called condonation, 90 00:07:10,250 --> 00:07:14,970 which meant the wife had forgiven the husband all previous acts, and 91 00:07:14,970 --> 00:07:18,820 the husband could demand her return. 92 00:07:18,820 --> 00:07:23,110 After much negotiation, some bitter back and forth and 93 00:07:23,110 --> 00:07:27,080 sheer dome luck, she won her decree. 94 00:07:27,080 --> 00:07:31,820 Byron left England as soon as the separation agreement was signed 95 00:07:31,820 --> 00:07:36,930 in the spring of 1816, as by then fashionable society had 96 00:07:36,930 --> 00:07:41,070 turned its back on him, particularly when he walked into former 97 00:07:41,070 --> 00:07:46,248 friend Lady Jersey's Soiree arm in arm with his sister. 98 00:07:46,248 --> 00:07:49,380 Yet once aboard ship sailing from England, 99 00:07:49,380 --> 00:07:54,040 Byron used his glorious words to restore his honor, 100 00:07:54,040 --> 00:07:59,630 blast his wife, and win over the daughter he refused to see. 101 00:07:59,630 --> 00:08:05,780 He presented himself as a bereft father torn from his child beginning the third 102 00:08:05,780 --> 00:08:12,810 cantos of Childe Harrods' Pilgrimage, is thy face like thy mother's my fair child? 103 00:08:12,810 --> 00:08:16,790 Ada, sole daughter of my house and heart. 104 00:08:16,790 --> 00:08:21,690 He told the world of his tenderness as a father, to hold thee lightly on 105 00:08:21,690 --> 00:08:26,820 a gentle knee and print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss. 106 00:08:26,820 --> 00:08:33,610 This it should seem was not reserved for me, yet this was in my nature. 107 00:08:33,610 --> 00:08:36,570 Through his brilliant poetry, the absent and 108 00:08:36,570 --> 00:08:42,580 very seductive father Ada would never need, reeled his daughter in. 109 00:08:42,580 --> 00:08:47,620 Byron became the ghost of a father even while he lived. 110 00:08:47,620 --> 00:08:49,930 His elements were hers. 111 00:08:49,930 --> 00:08:54,080 He claimed her as he sighed over what might have been. 112 00:08:54,080 --> 00:08:58,730 While in his poetry the absent Byron became the perfect father, 113 00:08:58,730 --> 00:09:02,440 Lady Byron, especially in Ada's early years, 114 00:09:02,440 --> 00:09:07,000 was an imperfect single mother of exceptional intellect and 115 00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:13,070 progressive ideals who had the sole responsibility of raising a brilliant, 116 00:09:13,070 --> 00:09:17,160 fiercely imaginative, and difficult daughter. 117 00:09:17,160 --> 00:09:22,990 And for her to be, Regency was a very lax time 118 00:09:22,990 --> 00:09:27,660 morally, but husbands and wives more or less stayed together. 119 00:09:27,660 --> 00:09:32,230 For someone of her class to have had her husband leave and for 120 00:09:32,230 --> 00:09:37,273 her to be left raising a daughter alone, was extremely unusual. 121 00:09:37,273 --> 00:09:43,418 On Ada's first birthday, Lady Byron had written of her ambiguous feelings, 122 00:09:43,418 --> 00:09:47,420 she wrote this, and she wrote poetry all her life, 123 00:09:47,420 --> 00:09:51,983 thine is the smile and thine the bloom where hope my fancy, 124 00:09:51,983 --> 00:09:56,474 ripe in charms, but my hopes are dyed in memories gloom. 125 00:09:56,474 --> 00:10:03,046 Thou are not in a father's arms, thou are not in a father's arms. 126 00:10:03,046 --> 00:10:04,830 While the absent, seductive, 127 00:10:04,830 --> 00:10:10,160 perfect, father told the world how he regretted his inability to watch 128 00:10:10,160 --> 00:10:15,460 the dawn of little joys, to sit and see almost thy very growth. 129 00:10:15,460 --> 00:10:20,700 To view thee catch knowledge of objects, wonders yet to thee. 130 00:10:20,700 --> 00:10:22,660 What wonderous words! 131 00:10:22,660 --> 00:10:28,840 The actual catching, as well as any bungling, was left to mom. 132 00:10:28,840 --> 00:10:33,743 One could say that from birth Ada was pulled between loving 133 00:10:33,743 --> 00:10:41,657 the mother she had and the father she imagined. 134 00:10:41,657 --> 00:10:47,232 In the first years of her motherhood, educational innovations for 135 00:10:47,232 --> 00:10:51,970 the working class were Lady Byron's salvation. 136 00:10:51,970 --> 00:10:55,920 She wrote that the poor saved her from herself. 137 00:10:55,920 --> 00:10:58,240 When little Ada was not yet three years old, 138 00:10:58,240 --> 00:11:03,165 Lady Byron returned from a short summer trip to Scotland and 139 00:11:03,165 --> 00:11:09,330 founded Atseum in the north where she was born, not born actually but raised. 140 00:11:09,330 --> 00:11:15,640 The first infant school in England for the young children of the working poor. 141 00:11:15,640 --> 00:11:19,822 The school was based on socialist, Robert Owens, 142 00:11:19,822 --> 00:11:25,462 infant school in Scotland, and on the educational values of Swiss, 143 00:11:25,462 --> 00:11:31,410 Jean Jacques Rousseau, and those who followed him such as Pestalozzi. 144 00:11:31,410 --> 00:11:36,013 Young children were to learn, not through dry book learning imposed by 145 00:11:36,013 --> 00:11:41,150 severe masters, but through absorbing the lessons that nature teaches. 146 00:11:41,150 --> 00:11:46,130 They were to sing, to dance, to come to love of learning through their own 147 00:11:46,130 --> 00:11:52,510 curiosity inspired by teachers chosen through their God given patience, 148 00:11:52,510 --> 00:11:58,310 and ability to encourage the young toward their own directions and discoveries. 149 00:11:58,310 --> 00:12:05,450 The operative word in this progressive education was cheerfulness. 150 00:12:05,450 --> 00:12:09,480 In the 1830s when daughter Ada was married, and her mother herself, 151 00:12:09,480 --> 00:12:14,391 Lady Byron had the time to once more visit the progressive Hoffel 152 00:12:14,391 --> 00:12:19,580 school In Switzerland, where she sent her young Noel cousins to be educated. 153 00:12:19,580 --> 00:12:26,040 And she formed a relationship with its founder, Emmanuel Defelonberg. 154 00:12:26,040 --> 00:12:31,310 And he was, his ideas all came from Rousseau and Pestalozzi. 155 00:12:31,310 --> 00:12:34,186 Returning from Switzerland in her mid 40s, 156 00:12:34,186 --> 00:12:37,589 she founded the first cooperative school in England. 157 00:12:37,589 --> 00:12:41,191 In England,Ealing Grove School, for 158 00:12:41,191 --> 00:12:46,427 the education of the older children of the working poor, 159 00:12:46,427 --> 00:12:51,228 based on this Swiss plan of her quote making labor and 160 00:12:51,228 --> 00:12:57,901 more especially agricultural labor, a principal means of education. 161 00:12:57,901 --> 00:13:02,445 Part of the young students' day was spent in the pleasant schoolhouse she 162 00:13:02,445 --> 00:13:07,210 had completely renovated, learning through mutual dialogue and respect, 163 00:13:07,210 --> 00:13:09,420 guided by a humane master. 164 00:13:09,420 --> 00:13:12,060 And part of the day was spent out of doors, 165 00:13:12,060 --> 00:13:17,120 each youth tending his own garden, his own allotment. 166 00:13:17,120 --> 00:13:21,442 The healthy produce of which he could either give to his family or 167 00:13:21,442 --> 00:13:23,131 sell back to the school. 168 00:13:23,131 --> 00:13:29,185 In London at that first cooperative school, today it's the Ealing School 169 00:13:29,185 --> 00:13:34,230 of Art, there's a blue plaque commemorating Lady Byron. 170 00:13:34,230 --> 00:13:39,290 Lady Byron 1792 to 1860, founded the renowned cooperative 171 00:13:39,290 --> 00:13:44,040 school within these environments, 1834 to 1850. 172 00:13:44,040 --> 00:13:48,750 That blue plaque stands a rare public acknowledgement of 173 00:13:48,750 --> 00:13:55,040 Lady Byron's important contribution to progressive education in England. 174 00:13:55,040 --> 00:14:00,040 Her educational ideals were a conscious rebellion against the fagging 175 00:14:00,040 --> 00:14:05,520 system nd brutality of the upper class public schools of her country. 176 00:14:05,520 --> 00:14:09,410 Such as Harrow, where Lord Byron had his first introduction 177 00:14:09,410 --> 00:14:12,350 to what was then labeled sodomy. 178 00:14:12,350 --> 00:14:17,760 In Lady Byron's school, cooperation, not competition, was emphasized. 179 00:14:17,760 --> 00:14:21,590 Children of all or no religion were accepted. 180 00:14:21,590 --> 00:14:26,310 And none were forced to attend the morning scriptural readings or 181 00:14:26,310 --> 00:14:28,450 to go to church on Sunday. 182 00:14:28,450 --> 00:14:31,950 A small fee was to be paid and on time. 183 00:14:31,950 --> 00:14:36,700 It was a token amount but indicated the school was not a charity, but 184 00:14:36,700 --> 00:14:38,150 a partnership. 185 00:14:38,150 --> 00:14:41,950 The Bible was not used for classroom instruction. 186 00:14:41,950 --> 00:14:46,700 Lady Byron once wrote to her friend, in regards to religious opinions 187 00:14:46,700 --> 00:14:51,400 I am a communist, my neighbor's opinion is as good as mine. 188 00:14:51,400 --> 00:14:54,540 If he be right under whatever name, it's so 189 00:14:54,540 --> 00:15:00,430 much gained for me, I call this Christian, you do not. 190 00:15:00,430 --> 00:15:03,723 Such was the clear reasoning of that liberal, 191 00:15:03,723 --> 00:15:14,040 far sighed benefactor to English education who history has all but ignored. 192 00:15:14,040 --> 00:15:19,421 As clear and farsighted as Lady Byron was when it came to the educational advance 193 00:15:19,421 --> 00:15:24,563 for the working class in England, her daughter Ada's education was that of 194 00:15:24,563 --> 00:15:30,460 many upper middle class or aristocratic girls who had intellectual potential. 195 00:15:30,460 --> 00:15:35,610 They were educated by tutors at home just as Lady Byron had been. 196 00:15:35,610 --> 00:15:39,620 Lady Byron recognized Ada's intelligence early on. 197 00:15:39,620 --> 00:15:45,150 By the time Ada was two and a half she was absorbing information with alacrity. 198 00:15:45,150 --> 00:15:50,980 One of the myths about Lady Byron was that she consciously avoided poetry in Ada's 199 00:15:50,980 --> 00:15:57,560 early education as if English literature was part of any curriculum at that time. 200 00:15:57,560 --> 00:16:01,540 In one of the few letters Lord Byron not only wrote, 201 00:16:01,540 --> 00:16:05,540 but actually sent to his wife to his sister of course. 202 00:16:05,540 --> 00:16:09,239 He delighted in Ada's love of science and 203 00:16:09,239 --> 00:16:13,689 he wrote that he too did not like poetry as a child. 204 00:16:13,689 --> 00:16:18,408 Ada's weekdays were filled by her lessons dipped into about 205 00:16:18,408 --> 00:16:22,477 a quarter of an hour at a time, and broken up by rest or 206 00:16:22,477 --> 00:16:27,410 reclining on a board, intended to ease her restlessness. 207 00:16:27,410 --> 00:16:31,260 There was music, French, arithmetic, exercise, 208 00:16:31,260 --> 00:16:34,800 drawing, geography, outside play. 209 00:16:34,800 --> 00:16:40,600 She was given tickets when she was good and had some taken back when she wasn't. 210 00:16:40,600 --> 00:16:44,700 These tickets were part of Robert Owen's system of rewards and 211 00:16:44,700 --> 00:16:50,090 punishments that replaced verbal and physical punishments. 212 00:16:50,090 --> 00:16:53,736 There is little doubt Ada strove to please her mother, 213 00:16:53,736 --> 00:16:58,345 to win her approval, a motivation Lady Byron actually encouraged. 214 00:16:58,345 --> 00:17:00,106 At five, Ada wrote, quote, 215 00:17:00,106 --> 00:17:04,100 the lessons have not been done as well as they might have been done. 216 00:17:04,100 --> 00:17:09,870 And I'm sorry for that because I want very much to get another 12 tickets. 217 00:17:09,870 --> 00:17:15,930 I want to please Mama very much that she and I may be happy together. 218 00:17:15,930 --> 00:17:21,450 At about that age, Ada asked her mother if her grandfather, 219 00:17:21,450 --> 00:17:24,490 Sir Ralph, was also her father. 220 00:17:24,490 --> 00:17:28,943 Ada remembered her mother's anger in retorting that her grandfather was 221 00:17:28,943 --> 00:17:30,470 not her father. 222 00:17:30,470 --> 00:17:35,583 Lady Byron was by nature temperate, but her daughter had hit her vulnerability. 223 00:17:35,583 --> 00:17:41,254 Ada was not in a father's arms, and Lady Byron, for all her intelligence, 224 00:17:41,254 --> 00:17:45,869 was raising a child who had no idea of who or why the father was. 225 00:17:45,869 --> 00:17:50,230 Byron died of fever in Greece when Ada was eight. 226 00:17:50,230 --> 00:17:56,270 Lady Byron was overwhelmed when the news was brought to her, Ada cried as well. 227 00:17:56,270 --> 00:18:00,409 Lady Byron assumed her daughter was crying for her mother's grief, 228 00:18:00,409 --> 00:18:03,633 as her child had never known her father, far from it. 229 00:18:03,633 --> 00:18:07,197 While Lady Byron went to visit the new seventh Lord Byron, 230 00:18:07,197 --> 00:18:12,430 Ada's governess took her to the ship that brought Byron's body back to Byron. 231 00:18:12,430 --> 00:18:18,030 Ada wrote to her mother she was quote, papa's ship and liked it very much. 232 00:18:18,030 --> 00:18:22,330 Viewing the ship made her realize, quote, what a great misfortune it is for 233 00:18:22,330 --> 00:18:25,420 me not to have brothers and sisters. 234 00:18:25,420 --> 00:18:29,500 When her young cousin George died, she wrote to her mother, 235 00:18:29,500 --> 00:18:34,090 his death was going to be a very severe blow of grief. 236 00:18:34,090 --> 00:18:38,120 Ada did not need logical connections to experience bereavement 237 00:18:38,120 --> 00:18:43,050 over her father's death, or over her own existential situation. 238 00:18:43,050 --> 00:18:48,780 Years later when Lady Byron introduced Vedora Lee to Ada as her half sister, 239 00:18:48,780 --> 00:18:53,410 Ada immediately held out her hand to her less fortunate sibling. 240 00:18:53,410 --> 00:18:58,860 As a child Ada reached out for her mothers hand through scientific innovations. 241 00:18:58,860 --> 00:19:04,310 When she was 12, while her mother spent the winter season in Devon hoping for 242 00:19:04,310 --> 00:19:08,880 a cure to her bronchitis, Ada searched for a way of bringing her letters to her 243 00:19:08,880 --> 00:19:12,260 mother and her mother's letters to her more quickly. 244 00:19:12,260 --> 00:19:16,460 To this end, she became absorbed in building a flying machine 245 00:19:16,460 --> 00:19:21,840 powered by steam, steam was the microchip of the 19th century. 246 00:19:21,840 --> 00:19:25,130 And Anju when Lord Byron had written ironically 247 00:19:25,130 --> 00:19:27,550 steam engines will convey him to the moon. 248 00:19:27,550 --> 00:19:31,760 But Ada went beyond metaphor and after months of single 249 00:19:31,760 --> 00:19:38,280 minded absorption realized she would base her head not on a birds body, 250 00:19:38,280 --> 00:19:43,060 but on that of a horse and you heard something about that yesterday. 251 00:19:43,060 --> 00:19:47,620 She also figured out the maps that she would use to get these letters to her 252 00:19:47,620 --> 00:19:54,840 mother quickly, she figured out her own GPS, she was amazing at that age. 253 00:19:54,840 --> 00:19:58,130 Lady Byron supported Ada's scientific creativity, but 254 00:19:58,130 --> 00:20:02,778 was concerned by the intensity with which her daughter pursued her interests with 255 00:20:02,778 --> 00:20:07,380 single minded preoccupation and limitless confidence. 256 00:20:07,380 --> 00:20:12,340 She urged the 12 year old to go on with her other studies as well. 257 00:20:12,340 --> 00:20:14,188 Ada wrote to her mother, 258 00:20:14,188 --> 00:20:19,293 I wish that supposing I fly well by the time you come back, you would, 259 00:20:19,293 --> 00:20:25,103 if you are satisfied with my performance, present me with a crown of laurels, 260 00:20:25,103 --> 00:20:28,910 but it must only be on the condition that I fly well. 261 00:20:28,910 --> 00:20:32,410 Ada was not only precocious, but headstrong. 262 00:20:32,410 --> 00:20:35,980 When her early tutor put her in a cornice, she bit off the cornice. 263 00:20:35,980 --> 00:20:39,690 As a teenager, she was sexually adventurous and 264 00:20:39,690 --> 00:20:41,900 had an affair with her tutor. 265 00:20:41,900 --> 00:20:47,730 Ada reported that they did everything except as Ada put in, have connection. 266 00:20:47,730 --> 00:20:51,847 Connection or not, they were found out, the tutor fired. 267 00:20:51,847 --> 00:20:56,215 Scientifically she was a prodigy similar to Thomasina and 268 00:20:56,215 --> 00:20:59,240 Tom Stoppard's play, Arcadia. 269 00:20:59,240 --> 00:21:05,700 Except Ada was more overtly sexual and lived on, well Thomasina died. 270 00:21:05,700 --> 00:21:10,260 After Ada's affair with her tutor, Lady Byron spent less time with 271 00:21:10,260 --> 00:21:13,790 progressive causes and more with royal society, and 272 00:21:13,790 --> 00:21:19,990 dressmakers preparing a proper course for Ada. 273 00:21:19,990 --> 00:21:26,597 Ada did turn a corner, at 17 she was presented in court. 274 00:21:26,597 --> 00:21:31,222 At this point her mother brought her to meet Charles Babbage at one of his 275 00:21:31,222 --> 00:21:36,171 quirky and pleasant London soirees, and the rest, as we say, is history. 276 00:21:36,171 --> 00:21:39,840 So let's get past Ada's translation in and 277 00:21:39,840 --> 00:21:43,350 her notes which brought her posthumous fame. 278 00:21:43,350 --> 00:21:47,730 And go on to the fact that after that publication 279 00:21:47,730 --> 00:21:52,230 Ada used her computive skills bironically that 280 00:21:52,230 --> 00:21:58,030 internal tug between present mother and absent father resumed. 281 00:21:58,030 --> 00:22:03,050 Ada gambled heavily, relying on programs she created that she believed that 282 00:22:03,050 --> 00:22:06,650 could predict the winners of horse races. 283 00:22:06,650 --> 00:22:11,220 The outcome of the method was predictable, she lost a fortune. 284 00:22:11,220 --> 00:22:15,820 And let me say, a few people have mentioned that the account books for 285 00:22:15,820 --> 00:22:18,820 the Lovelaces were balanced, and that's true. 286 00:22:18,820 --> 00:22:20,750 The thing was she was more and 287 00:22:20,750 --> 00:22:23,860 more entrenched with these gamblers she owed money. 288 00:22:23,860 --> 00:22:28,780 She secretly took the Lovelace jewels, had pastes made and 289 00:22:28,780 --> 00:22:30,930 pawned them, things of that sort. 290 00:22:30,930 --> 00:22:34,440 Nothing was really showing on the surface 291 00:22:34,440 --> 00:22:38,630 until her husband found out about a month before. 292 00:22:38,630 --> 00:22:39,860 She used excuses, 293 00:22:39,860 --> 00:22:44,080 she borrowed from her mother, she borrowed from everyone she could. 294 00:22:44,080 --> 00:22:49,070 Now since Ada's marriage to William King in 1835, and 295 00:22:49,070 --> 00:22:54,165 up to 1850, Lady Byron believed she had found in her son in law, 296 00:22:54,165 --> 00:22:59,790 ten years older than Ada, a father's arm for the daughter she raised. 297 00:22:59,790 --> 00:23:04,584 On William King's part he had never before known mother's love, and 298 00:23:04,584 --> 00:23:08,169 believed his mother in law's love unconditional. 299 00:23:08,169 --> 00:23:12,525 Lady Byron could not do enough for her highborn serious crow, 300 00:23:12,525 --> 00:23:16,380 as he was called, because of his thick eyebrows. 301 00:23:16,380 --> 00:23:23,870 Lady Byron was the hen, and Ada was their birdie, it was a barnyard love fest. 302 00:23:23,870 --> 00:23:28,730 Shortly after the marriage, it was through Lady Byron's influence with 303 00:23:28,730 --> 00:23:33,950 the young Queen Victoria that William King became the first Arrow of Lovelace, 304 00:23:33,950 --> 00:23:37,880 and Ada became as we know her today, the Countess of Lovelace. 305 00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:43,870 When Ada's debts became so huge as to no longer be covered up, 306 00:23:43,870 --> 00:23:46,140 a month after he learned about it, 307 00:23:46,140 --> 00:23:52,460 William came running to Lady Byron late one night to unburden himself. 308 00:23:52,460 --> 00:23:54,110 Rather than consoling him, 309 00:23:54,110 --> 00:23:58,950 Lady Byron cried out, didn't he know genius was always a child? 310 00:23:58,950 --> 00:24:03,458 How could Lovelace have allowed Ava with her naivety, and 311 00:24:03,458 --> 00:24:08,623 her belief in her own infallibility to go to the races without him. 312 00:24:08,623 --> 00:24:12,109 He could not understand that the Lady Byron, 313 00:24:12,109 --> 00:24:16,170 her daughter was once, were not in a father's arm. 314 00:24:16,170 --> 00:24:21,667 Again, she the single mother was all alone and psychologically to her way of thinking 315 00:24:21,667 --> 00:24:26,649 after all the good she had done for her son in law, she was once more betrayed. 316 00:24:26,649 --> 00:24:30,100 She wrote, I am only loved by strangers. 317 00:24:30,100 --> 00:24:33,910 Daughter Ada on her part wouldn't speak to her mother, saying, 318 00:24:33,910 --> 00:24:36,730 Lady Byron had insulted her husband. 319 00:24:36,730 --> 00:24:40,810 However, Ada stretched the truth to her advantage all the time and 320 00:24:40,810 --> 00:24:44,770 was more likely she was embarrassed that her mother now knew how she had 321 00:24:44,770 --> 00:24:47,960 lied to her as she asked for more and more money. 322 00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:52,710 No matter, Lady Byron got a list of Ada's debts through her lawyer and 323 00:24:52,710 --> 00:24:54,720 she paid them all off. 324 00:24:54,720 --> 00:24:59,810 It is almost a given in family relationships that love between mother and 325 00:24:59,810 --> 00:25:02,710 daughter often has a critical edge to it. 326 00:25:02,710 --> 00:25:07,410 Whereas love between daughter and father seems unconditional. 327 00:25:07,410 --> 00:25:09,760 Estranged for a year, mother and 328 00:25:09,760 --> 00:25:13,520 daughter reunited in the most tragic of circumstances. 329 00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:19,210 For Ada's constantly terrible periods which she called her Black Dwarf. 330 00:25:19,210 --> 00:25:23,820 Perhaps were early signs of the uterine cancer that she developed. 331 00:25:23,820 --> 00:25:29,170 During the last half year of Ada's life in 1852, mother and 332 00:25:29,170 --> 00:25:35,540 daughter established the intimacy and understanding that had often eluded them. 333 00:25:35,540 --> 00:25:39,940 One finds it all portrayed in Lady Byron's unpublished journal letters here at 334 00:25:39,940 --> 00:25:44,950 the Bodleian, which she wrote during the months she was with her daughter, 335 00:25:44,950 --> 00:25:48,160 her caregiver day and night. 336 00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:53,830 Ada, who once invented a steam engine to fly her letters to her mother, 337 00:25:53,830 --> 00:25:56,050 now had a mother all to herself. 338 00:25:56,050 --> 00:25:59,410 And perhaps that's what she had needed all of her life, 339 00:25:59,410 --> 00:26:01,440 neither found this out until the end. 340 00:26:01,440 --> 00:26:05,720 Lady Byron would lament, quote, to see clearly too late. 341 00:26:05,720 --> 00:26:08,842 She couldn't stop thinking of what might have been. 342 00:26:08,842 --> 00:26:14,520 Ada realized she was going to die at the age of 36, the same age as her father. 343 00:26:14,520 --> 00:26:19,370 In one hallucination she believed her father was causing her death. 344 00:26:19,370 --> 00:26:22,540 And other times she saw Lord Byron at her beside and 345 00:26:22,540 --> 00:26:25,810 told her mother he was there, he was. 346 00:26:25,810 --> 00:26:30,310 Lady Byron knew her daughter did not want to be buried at Lovelaces Estate at 347 00:26:30,310 --> 00:26:35,370 Arkham, by then Ada had informed her husband that his friend John Cross was her 348 00:26:35,370 --> 00:26:41,470 lover, and Lady Byron was incensed when Lovelace did not take that news well. 349 00:26:41,470 --> 00:26:45,470 The hen had turned into the lioness protecting her cub. 350 00:26:45,470 --> 00:26:50,368 Lady Byron thought to comfort Ada by proposing she be buried as she 351 00:26:50,368 --> 00:26:53,049 put it in Newstead, by her father. 352 00:26:53,049 --> 00:26:56,090 Ada's face lit up with pleasure and relief. 353 00:26:56,090 --> 00:26:57,242 Lady Byron wrote, 354 00:26:57,242 --> 00:27:01,790 Ada told her it had already been decided that she'd be buried in Newstead. 355 00:27:01,790 --> 00:27:05,097 But she didn't tell her mother because she thought, 356 00:27:05,097 --> 00:27:07,386 I thought you might be angry with me. 357 00:27:07,386 --> 00:27:11,744 Lady Byron dispelled this entirely, however, quote, 358 00:27:11,744 --> 00:27:15,025 I was secretly wounded by Ada's reserve. 359 00:27:15,025 --> 00:27:19,866 My journal is not however to be feelings of my own, away with them. 360 00:27:19,866 --> 00:27:21,450 I'd like to finish please. 361 00:27:21,450 --> 00:27:22,938 In her new intimacy, 362 00:27:22,938 --> 00:27:28,060 Lady Byron [LAUGH] was still Lady Byron, chewing away her feelings. 363 00:27:28,060 --> 00:27:32,240 Ada was still Ada, keeping a secret about wanting to be with her 364 00:27:32,240 --> 00:27:34,840 father that might displease her mother. 365 00:27:34,840 --> 00:27:40,100 My daughter, Byron wrote, concluding the third canto of Childe Harold, 366 00:27:40,100 --> 00:27:46,360 when Ada was barely a child, we heard it beautifully portrayed last night in music. 367 00:27:46,360 --> 00:27:49,580 My daughter, with thy name, this much shall end. 368 00:27:49,580 --> 00:27:54,930 I see thee not, I hear thee not, but none can be so wrapped in thee. 369 00:27:54,930 --> 00:27:59,970 My voice shall with thy future visions blend, and reach into thy heart 370 00:27:59,970 --> 00:28:06,070 when mine is cold, a token and a tone, even from thy father's mold. 371 00:28:06,070 --> 00:28:07,380 Ada was buried, 372 00:28:07,380 --> 00:28:12,720 her coffin touching that of her father's mold, all with her mother's approval. 373 00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:16,130 One does wonder if at the end of her short life, 374 00:28:16,130 --> 00:28:21,910 Ada had reconciled those opposite parental pulls in her nature. 375 00:28:21,910 --> 00:28:27,620 While she was dying, Ada felt regrets at not having done more while she lived. 376 00:28:27,620 --> 00:28:30,800 And let me summarize this at the end. 377 00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:35,870 Lady Byron responded to her quote, I pointed out to Ada 378 00:28:35,870 --> 00:28:40,400 that few thinking minds ever felt their ends accomplished, yet 379 00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:46,830 the survivors have been influenced by those lives in an unforeseen manner, 380 00:28:46,830 --> 00:28:52,850 leading us to believe that the ends of our existence are hidden from us, quote. 381 00:28:52,850 --> 00:28:57,789 Lady Byron said that more than 160 years ago to her dying daughter. 382 00:28:57,789 --> 00:29:03,394 We are all here today honoring Ada, Countess of Lovelace, and 383 00:29:03,394 --> 00:29:09,548 in one way or another attesting to the wisdom of her mother's words. 384 00:29:09,548 --> 00:29:10,106 Thank you. 385 00:29:10,106 --> 00:29:11,924 >> [APPLAUSE] >> I'm sorry it went a bit over.