20                                Carl R. Woodring

sponsibility for the burning of Byron's memoirs, whereas our
letter and passages from the answer to it show that Augusta must
have received this letter before she wrote generously to Wilmot
Horton in behalf of Lady Byron.

In all the confusions, recriminations, and horrors that ensued
—such as the incestuous misadventures of Medora Byron, who
thought herself the daughter of Byron as well as of Augusta—the
epilogue contains at least one healthy chord. Ada Byron, the
single legitimate issue of Byron's marriage, used her mathematical
heritage from her mother to do important work on Charles Bab-
bage's computer, which was refused by the British government
in 1842 because the transistor, which would make similar com¬
puters economically feasible, had not yet been invented. Unlike
the disunion of her parents, and of Byron's parents, Ada's mar¬
riage to the Earl of Lovelace was happy up to its last year, when
shortly before his wife's death the Earl found out how very un¬
successful she had been in trying to calculate odds at the race¬
tracks.