Talk:Ada Lovelace/2015/January

Deathbed "Religious transformation": Different versions
Hey, I want to point out and discuss some inconsistencies in three versions that are offered about her "deathbed conversion."

1) According to the current version in the article: "Ada Lovelace died at the age of 36... on 27 November 1852, from uterine cancer probably exacerbated by bloodletting by her physicians. The illness lasted several months, in which time Annabella took command over whom Ada saw, and excluded all of her friends and confidants. Under her mother's influence, she had a religious transformation (after previously being a materialist) and was coaxed into repenting of her previous conduct and making Annabella her executor. She lost contact with her husband after she confessed something to him on 30 August which caused him to abandon her bedside. What she told him is unknown. She was buried, at her request, next to her father at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Hucknall, Nottingham."

2) According to the version related by Patricia Jalland: "During August, when Ada's agony was at its height and Lord Lovelace expected her to die within a few weeks, he kept a journal which idealized her response to her illness and his own devotion. His journal recorded Ada's calmness, fortitude and resignation in the face of unremitting pain: "it was so angelic, the character of her beauty so pure, and disengaged from bodily elements that she was quite fit to pass away from among us into a higher sphere'. On 21 August Lord Lovelace reported his wife's last wishes to be buried by the side of her father, Lord Byron, and to see her two sons. She felt all was 'fast ending in this life', and was anxious to be allowed a day or two in full possession of her faculties, for preparation and farewells. This version could have been almost any Victorian Christian deathbed scene in a contented family... In late August and early September 1852 Lady Byron, by her own account, appears to have been successful in converting her increasingly passive daughter to a belief in God and an afterlife, or at least to not opposing her mother's beliefs... By the end of August Ada Lovelace was in a supremely vulnerable state. Her rare periods of clear consciousness were haunted by fears of being buried alive, and by guilt about her adultery, which her mother had so deliberately intensified. On 30 August Lady Byron noted, with an astonishing degree of clinical detachment, 'stupor and faintness — scarcely any consciousness. . . loss of sight, vacant eyes — idiotic gestures'.20 When Ada whispered next day that she still hoped to live, her mother quashed the faint wish for life: "You are dying — you may not have another day — use it well". The climax of Lady Byron's representation of Ada's death was her daughter's act of contrition on 31 August- During a lucid interval Ada admitted her terror of the everlasting torment of hell: she confessed that she was guilty towards God, and should have "a million of years" of the horrible pains she had suffered in this disease. It was in vain to talk to her generally of God's mercy in Christ — she could not hope — and her terror and distress were great.' Ada then begged forgiveness from God for her sins against both her mother and her husband.22 Next day Lady Byron reported that brain fever was feared, for 'the eyes have a Maniacal expression', and only she could control her daughter's 'distracted feelings'. Early in the morning of 4 september Ada Lovelace again appeared to be dying and gave Lady Byron instructions 'to have her oened if it could be of use' - a most unusual deathbed request in England in 1852. As Ada became weaker and more amaciated, so her mother's pressure According to Lady Byron, her daughter was seeking strength to die in meditation and prayer, in studying 'the character of our Saviour' and listening to her mother read aloud from the Gospels.25 These claims ring false, not least because Ada hated such reading aloud. Ada Lovelace's last hours in November 1852 brought little comfort: 'For some hours the last agonies — Once she was supposed gone — Not an interval of rest or comfort — Faintings and fierce pains alternating"

- Patricia Jalland. 1996. Death in the Victorian Family. Oxford University Press, p. 63

3) According to Doris Moore (1977): "....were in an hypnotic trance, or surveying the contours of a distant landscape in another world. Her preparations were spiritual as well as practical. She underwent a series of religious transformations that showed the growing influence of her mother. Desire the pain which seldom let her sleep more than an hour or two, watched over by a night nurse, Miss Bermick, there was the nausea that attended her efforts to eat; but Dr Locock gave her some relief with pills and Dr West prescribed morphia, which made her languid but humbed the agony. She was having her portrait done, seated at the piano, by Henry Phillips, the son of Thomas Phillips, B. S., who had painted two famous portraits of her father, and she managed to remain long enough when he came for him to make some progress. She even played duets with Annabella, which Lovelace noted was 'an enjoyment to both.' 'She spoke freely of the future state — & how necessary a sequence it was to this world, how incomplete all here was — how pervading the mind of the Deity and yet how inscrutable His designs. . . . She considered how all lives had in the view of their creator their use and mission — that they ended when that was over — how hers might be in that predicament. I put her in mind how often in our rambles among the hills I had observed her eyes gazing wistfully into space as though ready to float off into the future. She smiled assent with a melancholy pleasure. '"1 When she was too ill to move from her bedroom, Mrs Sartoris, Fanny Kemble's sister, came to sing to her, standing in the next room. The piano would have been in the drawing-room of the house, a very large and handsome first-floor front : at the back was a big room with a fine sweep of bow windows. Though normally that would have been a reception room, Ada must have had her bed moved down there both to be nearer the piano, her principal diversion, and to have the servants in the basement within easier call. Apart from the doctors and her family, she seldom if ever received visitors at her bedside. On most days she dressed and came into the drawing-room for her brief spells at the piano, and she would make an appearance in the dining-room, which was on the ground floor, for dinner, being assisted down the beautiful late 18th-century curving staircase. The food would be hardly touched but the ceremony o joining the family at the table once a day was maintained. As Lovlace was abstemious to a most unusual degree, she had not to sit through a lengthy and lavish meal. On 3 August he recorded that Mr Phillips was getting on with the portrait, and that, after dinner he and Ada had 'sad talk about W[oron- zow] G[reig] and J[ohn] C[rosse]' and that Crosse had come for an hour in the evening. That sad talk must have been much more saddening for Ada than her husband because it required a depth of deceit lower than she had yet reached. During Crosse's visit of an hour, she had contrived, perhaps by means of her maid, to give..."

- Doris L Moore. 1977. Ada, Countess of Lovelace: Byron's Legitimate Daughter. Harper & Row. p. 306

Having read this, it is clear that these versions differ in some basic statements. She died on 27 November 1852, and it is affirmed that three months before, she confessed something to her husband who apparently lost contact with her. However, I found another book in which it is stated that "Three months before Ada Lovelaces painful death from cancer in 1852, her husband arranged to have a portrait painted, though she was already 'wasted almost to a beautiful shadow'." 1. abr> So, taking all into account, I want to raise two questions: 1) Was she really a materialist before this experience? and 2) What was that "religious transformation", according to historical records or documented registers? The fist statement is apparently referenced (Woolley 1999, pp. 361–62), but I couldn't access to the book anywhere and I am not able to verify it (I hope someone could). The statement that she was a "materialist" might have been an interpretation of something else, rather than a fact, cos if we look into some of the quotes from Ada Lovelace's personal correspondence, she certainly seems to have been religious, spiritual, or at least a believer, even before her deathbed. On the second question, I would appreciate that you share your views and, if possible, offer the comments of another source(s) or biographical book(s). It'd be very helpful.--Goose friend (talk) 20:27, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Was Ada Lovelace ever styled "The Right Honourable"?
The personal style "The Right Honourable" is nowadays reserved for Privy Counsellors. Was it otherwise in the 19th Century? Lovelace was certainly not a Privy Counsellor; I cannot see her husband's name in the lists maintained on Wikipedia, and in any case the style is not conferred on spouses.

I am no expert on styles and titles of the English and Scottish peerages, so I hope this point will receive attention from a knowledgeable person. If the style "The Right Honourable" is indeed correct, then a suitable explanation might be added to the page The Right Honourable.

See also: List of Privy Counsellors (1820-1837), List of Privy Counsellors (1837-1901).

212.159.102.166 (talk) 02:30, 11 December 2014 (UTC) (KJN)


 * Wives of legal peers below the rank of marquess are styled as The Right Honourable nowadays (examples: The Lady Soames who was not a privy counsellor and who died last year was referred to as The Rt Hon in the The London Gazette and suo jure peeresses who are not privy counsellors ). I can not say if The Rt Hon was used for wives of peers during the 19th century (it was at least used for peers during the 18th century) or if it was spelled 'Honorable' as it currently is in the titles and styles section of this article. Björn Knutson (talk) 20:41, 21 January 2015 (UTC)