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friend presumably] is a little better today. She was very much pleased yesterday with a box of the most beautiful things imaginable from Miss Noel. There were beautiful little wee wee baskets, one larger basket, and some pincushions in the form of little guitars, another carriage and Louisa is to have a dozen more carriages of different sorts.
    Today I have been doing some Italian, and I have written about Arrowroot, and made out a little alphabetical list of all the things I am going to write about from Bingley’s Useful Knowledge there are two dozen different things I wish to write about, and I have been puzzling hard at a sum in the rule of three which I could not do, the question is if 750 men are allowed 22500 rations of bread per month how many rations will a garrison of 1200 men require?
    I think by the time you come back I may have learnt something about decimals, I attempted the double rule of three but I could not understand it, however I will not give it up yet, the book does not teach as well as you do… My purse is getting on beautifully. It is for Louisa’s trade and though it is a coarse purple one, I have some thoughts of buying it and giving it to you.
    Mrs Montgomery is very kind to me, and I am not very unhappy though of course I should be happier if you were here… I get up between six and half past six, breakfast at nine, dine at one, and sup at six. I hope I am not very troublesome… My watch is very useful to me here, I only wish I could wear it…. Have you got me a governess yet? …
    I must now conclude. If you have too much to do, pray don’t write to me at all, I am dying to ride over on horseback to Battle to meet you on Wednesday. I wish above every thing that such an arrangement would be made.
    Goodbye, yours affectionately
    A. Ada Byron.
    Likewise before, in her letter of September 7 1824, she reported her entire day to her mother:
    My dear Mama. I got my fryed fish yesterday. Frank goes today, but he is still Gobblebook for he is reading Captain Hall. I have got a great deal of cold. How is Lady Tamworth. I hope she liked the needlebook…. Puff is on the sofa in the drawing room. I am ne[t]ting a purse. I am very sorry Flora is not here for I miss her more than ever.
    The letter writing was carefully guided as well. For example, not all 1824-1826 letters (none before that date are known to exist) in the Lovelace-Byron collection at the Bodleian are in Ada’s own handwriting. Several are in the handwriting of one of her governesses presumably, and they frequently start with ‘Dear Annabella’. But even when the letter is in Ada’s handwriting (as indeed the ‘fryed fish’ letter is above) there are sometimes sentences that Ada’s governess either dictated to her or perhaps helped her to write by suggesting phrases.
    What did Ada ask her mother about Byron? Throughout her life she herself seems always to have thought highly of him and to have wished she could see him. But the letters of her youth provide no clue. There is evidence, however, that Lady Byron simply made her father a taboo subject at home. For example, it is known that when Ada was a little girl she asked her mother whether a father and a grandfather were the same. When she asked this question – hardly a wicked one – she was severely rebuked by her mother.
    As for Byron himself, despite his inconsistency in emotional matters, he does not indeed appear ever to have stopped caring about Ada and loving her in the way that seemed to suit him best – that is, from a distance. In a letter from Venice to his publisher John Murray on February 2 1818, when she was two, he wrote:
    I have a great love for little Ada, and I look forward to her as the pillar of my old age, should I ever reach that desolate period, which I hope not.
    A year later he writes on June 7 1819 from Bologna:
    I have not heard of my little Ada, the Electra of my Mycenæ, but there will be a day of reckoning, even should I not live to see it.
    He