Devonshire Feb 16

and Annabella were both, first and
foremost, ladies, and this a time of
manners, decorum and the strict
observance of the social graces that
prohibited all such interchanges
between people of breeding and
rank, face to face across the tea cups.
cleaner and the bathing machines
not so easily overlooked by curious
passers-by.
The Nelsons had known both places
mined was her mother to paint the
father out of her daughter’s life
that Ada was not shown the family
portrait of the man – which was
safeguarding Ada was undoubtedly
a chip off the old block.
Instead they talked about the
weather, their health, their children
and in Fanny’s case, her grandchildren.
Both performed good works,
read books and newspapers, wrote
letters, (Annabella was a good poet
in her own right) entertained in
their homes (as well as local hotels)
over teas and suppers, enjoyed the
occasional promenade and were
regular visitors to the town and
especially to Exmouth’s new and
popular Assembly Rooms at the
bottom of the Beacon which had
become a magnet for local society.
Ada Byron, Countess of
Lovelace rests next to her
father in the family vault at
Hucknall, Warwickshire
Horatio and Fanny Nelson loved
Devon and honeymooned in
Exmouth. These happy memories
brought her back to live there
after his death
Fanny Nelson, pictured here
in her final year, outlived two
husbands, her son Josiah, and
four of her grandchildren. She
is buried at Littleham
Both of course were also regular
churchgoers and members of the
congregation at the church of St.
Margaret and St. Andrew at nearby
Littleham.
Exmouth then had a population
of 2,000 or so and was just 15
hours coach travel from Bath and
20 or less from London and was
well. They had spent part of their
honeymoon to-ing and fro-ing
between the newly emerging coastal
resorts of East and South Devon.
The year had been 1789, Fanny was
then 28, and a widow with a young
son, Josiah Nisbet, Nelson, 31 and it
was almost certainly this memory
of happier times that brought her
back, aged 46, after his passing.
kept hanging prominently wherever
they lived, but covered in a green
shroud - until her 20th birthday.
Alas for Annabella’s best efforts:
his genius did manifest itself in
his daughter, not as a writer of
poetry but as a scientist or ‘natural
philosopher’ to use the language of
the age. She worked with Charles
Fateful encounter
But the Byron’s were yet to arrive in
Exmouth when, in 1815, the Napoleonic
wars finally over, Fanny’s son,
Josiah, (after a career in the navy
where he had been the despair of
his step-father) was given £1,000
by his mother to set up a business.
By 1819 he had extended its scope
to Paris and on a return visit to
Exmouth, met and married a personable
young woman called Frances
Evans, who had become companion
to Lady Nelson at Number Six.
Lady Byron - ‘Arabella’ to her
friends, and the intellectual
superior of her poet husband,
who scorned her as ‘the
princess of parallelograms’
already ‘a place to which the people
of Exeter much resort for diversion
and bathing in the sea’.
In his book The Rise of the Devon
Seaside Resorts, John Travis
quotes a visitor who wrote, “walked
among shoals of Exeter damsels,
whose insufferable undress and
ill-breeding justly exposes them
to the contempt and derision of
strangers”.
It is perhaps why Fanny Nelson, who
was a frequent sea bather, preferred
to take her ‘dips’ at neighbouring
Sidmouth, a carriage ride away,
where the sea was undoubtedly
Ada, the Byron’s daughter and
a mathematical genius, was not
allowed to look upon her father’s
portrait until she was 20
The Lady at Number 16
Annabella arrived later in Exmouth
and chose to live at Number 16, a
property that was then a small but
very select hotel.
Her daughter Ada was brought up
to study the sciences and logic – an
unusual education for a woman in
that era – in the hope that any artistic
or poetic leanings or ‘amorous
excesses’ inherited from her father
in self-imposed exile, would not be
allowed to flourish.
Byron had died in 1824 when Ada
was eight years old and so deter-
Lord George Byron, poet,
adventurer and libertine, who
lived in self-imposed exile
abroad, never to return after
his wife divorced him
Babbage, the mathematician and
inventor who lived in Totnes and
designed and built the world’s first
‘calculating engine’ or computer. He
was also a philosopher and believed,
interestingly enough, that many of
the ‘breakthroughs’ in understanding
by the scientific mind came
about through divine revelation.
Ada, mathematical genius that she
was, agreed with him. She once
wrote to a fellow scientist, “I am
often reminded of certain sprites
and fairies one reads of, who are
at one's elbows in one shape now,
and the next minute in a form most
dissimilar”. In spite of her mother’s
In 1823 Fanny went to Paris and
stayed with Josiah and Frances and
their young family in their home in
the Champs Elysee and did what
most grandmothers are expected
to do – baby sat whilst the parents
travelled around Europe.
But they were all together on Lake
Geneva, where Fanny actually met
Lord Byron, who took them rowing
on the lake. To her horror one of
the little ones fell in and was saved
from drowning by Byron, a strong
swimmer, who dived in after the
child.
Sad news from Paris
Back in Exmouth what is nowadays
called Nelson House, must have
seemed suddenly large and empty
to her, so she moved to a smaller
property at the other end of the
Beacon, in Louisa Terrace.
Came 1830, and Fanny, now in
her 69 th year was brought tragic
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