Augusta Ada Lovelace to Faraday   8 November 1844

Ashley Combe | Porlock | Somerset | Friday 8th Novr

Dear Mr Faraday,

How much have you said to me by simply not answering my last letter!¹ (I mean the one I wrote in reply to your two ²).

I feel, merely from this circumstance, how well you understand me, & how much & deeply you have felt on the subject of our communications.

I seem to know all this, as well as if you had written volumes.

My object in this letter is not to give you the further remarks which I promised, & which I still defer for a little; but to explain to you some of my arrangements as they now stand.

I am going to Mr Crosse³ at Bromfield on the 20th, to stay a few days⁴. I enclose you a letter from him, received today.

Now it has struck me that perhaps I might be useful to you while there. So, if there is any subject or subjects you would like me especially to observe, enquire, or consider, for you, during my stay, give me your orders, & I will show myself a faithful & intelligent agent.

Again, I have (I know) great influence with Mr C-; & hints or suggestions from me he would be apt to consider & follow. So perhaps you might like to suggest to me, how to suggest usefully to him!

Now, let none of this trouble you. I would not miss a possible opportunity of being useful to you, or useful to Science, (Science whose bride I am)!

But none of this may fall in with your views, your feelings, or your powers, at this moment. If so, just put up Mr C-'s letter to return me, & say on the envelope merely 3 words to let me know that you have nothing to charge me with, but that I have not plagued you.

Remember that I am to be your assistant, if I am any thing at all to you. And you are never to let yourself be plagued by me, or in connection with me.

I expect to be in Town somewhere about the 25th. I hope that you will then give me an evening, & will also let me come one morning to your philosopher's cell, just to look about me there, (but not to interrupt you).

In this way, I shall soon find out how best to serve you. Trust me for that.

Your mind is one so peculiarly interesting to me, that I earnestly desire to brighten & to lighten its earthly labours & anxieties.

I am again preparing some publications;- & have engagements of that kind until July next⁵. Then, I mean (unless you discourage me) to undertake your Researches for review, or at any rate as my hinge & centre for an Electrical Article (probably for the Quarterly).

Meanwhile, all of this winter I shall make you & your views & occupations my study more or less; that is, in as far as you will let me.

When once I have the key to your prevailing line of interests, I know I can be a minister in your service, in a thousand ways; & that without interfering with my own views & avocations, but so as to make all my services to you co-operate with my pursuits & progress.

One thing I am now writing is again in the service of my friend Babbage; but of a very different description from the last ⁶. How I wish by the bye that his mind were (in some points) more akin to that which in you I so admire.

There is in him too much self, & too little of what I would term divine love.

He is capable of great devotion to individuals now & then, but there is not in him the Scripture the Christian love which I so adore.

He is a great man, & has a great intellect; but he would have been a yet greater, & his intellect would have been yet higher & wider, had his moral feelings corresponded.

This, by the way, is an illustration of some of the feelings & principles I slightly sketched in my first ⁷ letter to you.

Babbage has I think in him the capacity however, for a high moral & religious development, tho' I doubt if it will be in this world.

I am much attached to & interested in him, up to a certain point; but then comes something which creates a bar to that degree & kind of affection I feel for several others.

You see I cannot help writing to you as if you were indeed "the friend of many years" I named you in my last.

Ever most sincerely yours | A.A. Lovelace

Endorsed by Lovelace: Private

Endorsed by Faraday: 1844