by Julia Gray
‘What house, Mamma?’
‘It’s where... it’s where your father lived, Ada. Ten years ago, now – oh, can it really be ten?’
Hearing our conversation, Franz tactfully steers the boat so that our view of the Villa Diodati is unimpaired. I stare at the villa, examining its proportions, trying to imagine my father inside it, ten years ago. A strange transformation is taking place in my head: those early visions that I have cherished of my father – at the edge of the sea, writing at his desk, surrounded by servants – seem to shift somehow and merge with the real-life villa, with its lake view and bed of vines. He feels more real to me, now, than perhaps he has ever felt before.
‘Your father rented the house in 1816,’ says Mamma. ‘Another poet, a man named Percy Bysshe Shelley, who tragically drowned some years later, lived nearby. They were very good friends. The night that Mary Shelley thought of Frankenstein, there was a storm over the lake. The three writers decided to write stories – ghost stories – to mimic the dramatic weather. Or so it is said. What your father and Percy Bysshe Shelley concocted I do not know, but Frankenstein is deservedly a work of some repute.’
She is talking rather glibly, I notice, just as she did a few moments ago, when she recounted her history of Pestalozzi. It strikes me that these speeches have a purpose other than my elucidation: she is trying to fill some kind of empty space – in our conversation, or else in her own head – perhaps for fear of what else might appear unbidden. Miss Stamp has told me, quite recently, about Mary Shelley and her novel, Frankenstein, about a man who seeks to traverse the bounds of scientific possibility by bringing another man back to life by means of electricity. Clearly, Mary Shelley is a Woman of Ideas. I never knew that my father lived here, so near to the Shelleys.
But there’s something else that I never knew, somehow, until this moment.
‘Then I was only an infant,’ I say slowly, ‘when he left. I was not even one year old.’
Silence at this. Then: ‘That is quite correct, Ada.’
‘Why did he leave so soon, Mamma?’ I say.
The wind picks up and the boat surges wildly for a few minutes as Franz adjusts the sail.
‘Come,’ says Mamma, ‘I think we must go back.’
She does not answer my question; I never really thought that she would, but important questions are always worth asking. As we sail back across the lake – it is beginning to rain – Mamma looks back at the house, just once, as though to imprint it upon her memory. She frowns a little, as though such an imprinting causes her a peculiar kind of pain – a pain that is unpleasant, but also, somehow, necessary.
Switzerland
September 1826
Staying up rather later than my usual bedtime, I am sitting at the foot of Mamma’s easy-chair in the furnished apartments we have taken in Canton Berne, listening to the conversation between three learned and lively-minded women. Mary Montgomery and Harriet Siddons have come to join us in our travels; Robert Noel, meanwhile, has left us to attend to other matters. In a couple of days, we are to visit Dr Fellenberg’s institution.
Mamma is in a visible state of anticipation – she is usually too self-possessed to be demonstrably excited – about visiting the famed academy. I can tell from her manner of speaking – faster than usual, and a little breathless. ‘Of course, dear Harriet, it is on your recommendation that I thought of arranging this visit,’ she is saying. She is drinking a cup of chocolate with her usual gusto – we have it at home, sometimes, but at home it is nothing like as rich and sweet as it is in Switzerland.
Harriet Siddons is an actress – she once played Juliet at Drury Lane – and always speaks with clarity and emphasis. ‘Why, everyone knows that education in our country is quite shockingly in need of reform,’ she says, her voice resonating in the room. ‘Impractical, ill-considered and, more than anything else, unfair. Think of how many people are simply denied the right to an education.’
‘What people?’ I say.
Harriet Siddons looks at me sternly (she is not, in fact, a stern person – just a rather emphatic one, as previously stated). ‘Poor people, for a start,’ she says, as though I am very foolish for not understanding this.
I sit up a little straighter, listening now with real interest. For so long I have allowed myself to stop listening as soon as Mamma brings up the subject of Dr Fellenberg. Now I am intrigued; I have never thought about this before. ‘Do poor people not... do they not receive an education at all, then?’
‘Why, no, Ada,’ says Mary Montgomery, from her corner. She is bolstered by cushions, to make her position more comfortable, for she is troubled by continual back pain. Her lovely face is a little tired-looking in the firelight. ‘How could they, when they must work for a living, often from childhood?’
Mamma says: ‘What is needed is useful, practical training: the provision of a set of skills that children might be able to use for the rest of their lives. That is what they aim to do at Hofwyl.’
‘No messing about with things like Latin,’ says Mrs Siddons, making a wry, disgusted face. ‘Not like—’
‘Indeed,’ says Mamma tightly. She goes on: ‘I am looking forward to seeing the place for myself. More than I can possibly say.’
‘Annabella,’ says Mrs Siddons, who is always outspoken, ‘you can’t deny that your husband’s Harrovian education is the very opposite of the model you seek to know more about; now, can you?’
My mother rises from her chair. ‘Let us not talk about him now; not here, not in front of Ada.’
Thinking about this later, I’m puzzled. Mamma showed me my father’s house on the lake not two days previously, but she cannot allow her friends to mention his education. Why? It doesn’t make any sense. I think about it, treating it as a riddle, for hours – then, I realise the difference. Harriet Siddons was criticising Byron, finding fault with the way that he was brought up, and that is something that Mamma cannot permit. Our little sailing-trip earlier in the week was something very different.
If anything, I decide, it was a pilgrimage.
I have other questions besides this one, and decide to ask Mrs Siddons, since she was the one to mention my father in conversation. I choose my moment carefully, waiting until Mamma is resting, and Mrs Siddons is sitting alone on the balcony with a small pile of correspondence.
‘Mrs Siddons,’ I say. ‘May I ask you a question about my father?’
‘Why, Ada, certainly you may,’ she says in her usual forthright way, though it strikes me that she looks a little hesitant.
‘I’ve been thinking about my father’s departure to the Continent, and I know now – though I hadn’t realised this before – that it was in 1816. That is right, isn’t it?’
Mrs Siddons replies: ‘I remember his departure, as a matter of fact, quite clearly – it was in the newspapers, you see.’ She smiles wryly. ‘Let me think. The war was over, of course... yes, it was 1816, Ada.’
‘And he... he never came back?’
‘No indeed.’
She picks up her pen, balancing it between her heavily-ringed fingers, but doesn’t write anything.
‘Why was it in the newspapers?’ I say.
‘Well,’ says Mrs Siddons. ‘He was famous – still is, of course, even after death. What he did was always of interest.’
‘And why did he never come back, not even once?’
‘Ah, Ada, I don’t know if I can answer that. Perhaps he preferred the ways of foreigners. Many do, you know.’
This doesn’t entirely convince me. Now she scans a piece of correspondence, and then starts a letter on a fresh piece of paper, and I don’t feel that I can disturb her further. But I can’t dismiss this new knowledge: Byron left England when I was the smallest of infants, and never returned... I hadn’t realised that he left so soon after my birth. For some reason I can’t quite express, I feel saddened by this. My existence was not eno
ugh to tempt him to stay.
Mamma is at her most voluble in the carriage on the way to the institute the following morning, telling Miss Stamp the history of Pestalozzi.
‘Pestalozzi championed something that he called Anschauung – “the perception of the senses”,’ she is saying, as the carriage slows to a halt outside a tall gate. ‘Dr Fellenberg then expanded the principle, adding the concept of action, as well as perception. Education by action! Just think, Miss Stamp. It was – and still is – a revolutionary approach.’
I listen with interest to this as we disembark, and the gates are unlatched to allow us to walk through. Education by action sounds very much like the sort of thing I would enjoy. I do not consider long hours at a table – education by inaction – to be particularly exciting, and this is how my own time is largely spent. Perhaps, as a result of our Grand Tour, Mamma will revise her ideas about how I, her own daughter, am meant to be educated? It’s an exciting thought.
On the other side of the gate is a group of lofty, generously-sized buildings, in the Swiss style, with pointed roofs; they are surrounded by a pleasantly-sized courtyard, in which is a tall climbing-frame and a number of trees. Regimented gardens lie beyond on three sides. The courtyard is full of boys – some of about my age, and many much older – running, playing, exercising... there are even a few on horseback, and I watch them curiously; I have always wanted to be able to ride, and have never been thought to be strong enough.
A wise-looking man with very little hair and a quiet, precise manner approaches us. This must be Dr Fellenberg himself. ‘Milady,’ he says, taking my mother’s hand.
‘It is a great pleasure to meet you,’ Mamma replies.
‘What an atmosphere of quiet industry,’ says Mary Montgomery, walking with the aid of her cane. Dr Fellenberg is taking us on a comprehensive tour of the institution. We speak to teachers and pupils alike, looking at what is taught, and how, and all express admiration for this peaceful, purposeful school.
‘This is a place of equals, as you know,’ says Dr Fellenberg. ‘We have rich pupils and poor ones; old pupils and young ones. They are friends, truly, each feeling sympathy and understanding towards the other, no matter what their circumstances are. This is a school for everyone.’
‘Dr Fellenberg,’ I ask, ‘why are there no girls?’
‘But there are indeed girls here,’ says Dr Fellenberg, smiling, with a gesture towards the garden, around the back of the largest building, and there we see at least a dozen young women going about the business of weeding a vegetable patch. ‘My wife is in charge of the girls,’ he adds. ‘They too are in need of the skills we aim to provide, especially if they are to earn a living.’
The girls are now walking in pairs across the garden. I admire their practical-looking dresses with big pockets for carrying things in, and the way each girl has a basket piled high with implements or produce. One girl, red-haired and long-legged, has a smear of dirt on her cheek. I envy it. She looks at me suddenly, and we smile at each other.
At the end of our visit, Mamma seems exhausted, but elated. Harriet Siddons and Mary Montgomery are talking excitedly as the carriage takes us back to our apartments, but Mamma sits back, hands folded. In her eyes is an expression that I know very well, for I recognise it as one of mine: that glittering, magical-potential look that speaks of ideas.
‘Mamma,’ I say, ‘is... is an idea coming upon you?’
I assume that she won’t answer me, or say she doesn’t understand, but she does. ‘I have so much money, Ada,’ she says simply. ‘As you know, I am determined – utterly determined – to do good with it. Well, I am quite resolved. I shall set up a school, following in the footsteps of Dr Fellenberg and Pestalozzi. I shall get the best advice, and find the best teachers. I’ve no doubt that I can do it.’
And I have no doubt, either. Mamma is a very determined person.
Bifrons, Kent
June 1828
I am sitting in one of my preferred hiding places – the little box room next to the maids’ bedrooms, high up on the very top floor of Bifrons. Slant-ceilinged and filled to capacity with boxes of papers, trunks, and odds-and-ends, it is an excellent spot for Gobblebook, but also for thinking, uninterrupted.
It is nine months since we returned from our continental travels, and in many ways, I feel extraordinarily changed. I am different. Older (twelve and a half, which seems almost impossibly grown-up) and taller (a relief, for the doctor did not think, before we left, that I was growing quite as well as I might) and wiser. I am wiser in many ways. I can speak better in French; I have read thirty-seven books (Miss Stamp and I kept a faithful record); I can now complete Euclidian problems with speed and accuracy. Sometimes the beauty of geometry permeates my dreams: a galaxy of vertices and planes, glinting like palaces of ice.
And I have acquired not only the wisdom of books, but also of people. I know that, for all her protestations about the educational purposes of our tour, Mamma was, in many ways, giving space and time to her feelings for my dead father. It really was a pilgrimage of sorts. Yes: we visited Hofwyl, not once but twice, and I’ve no doubt that Mamma truly needed to see it. But our stay in Geneva, where we saw the house in which he had lived, was no less important to her. I’m sure of that.
There was more to come. After a time in Turin, on the Po River, where you could see the Alps in all their magnificence no matter where in the city you were, we went to Genoa. Here, Mamma rented a palazzo. It was simply the most exquisite place I had ever seen. Huge, square, grey – a veritable castle – it overlooked the bustling port town from a high-up resting place amongst the hills.
‘I am never happier than when I can see the sea,’ I said to Miss Stamp, as I waltzed from room to room.
One afternoon, a visitor appeared: a plump man of middle age with a kindly face and luxuriant moustaches. It transpired that Signor Isola had been engaged to teach me music and drawing.
‘Do you like music, Miss Byron?’ he asked me.
‘I love to sing, though perhaps I could be better at it,’ I told him. ‘While here on the Continent I have heard, on many occasions, the most beautiful organ music in churches.’
‘What made you like it so much?’
Thinking carefully, I replied: ‘Because of the patterns. The notes in each register complement each other. It seems a simple thing, but actually it must be very complicated. It must take a composer of great genius to create such music.’
Mamma said to Signor Isola: ‘Ada’s father wanted her to be musical. It was his wish.’
‘Lord Byron himself had a fine singing voice,’ said Signor Isola, nodding wisely.
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘You... you knew my father?’
‘Why, yes. He lived here, in Genoa, for a time – five years ago, it must be – before he went to Greece.’
And so, once again, it seemed that we had come to a place that my father had intimately known. Signor Isola came every day, ostensibly to teach me, but I found that he stayed long after the lesson was over, talking to Mamma about my father. I would have liked to have been part of their conversations, but was not invited. Leaning over the banisters of the piano nobile, I would do my best to overhear what they were saying.
‘He stayed in the Casa Saluzzo, if memory serves me well,’ Signor Isola was saying one evening. ‘A lovely place, with the most wonderful views. Ah, but I don’t know if he was happy here in Genoa. Many’s the time that I would see him, head lowered, at the water’s edge, and frowning as though all the cares of the world were visited upon him...’
Such tantalising snippets as this one would occasionally reach me. I heard only one other snippet, and it was Mamma this time who was speaking, but she was not speaking in English. I fretted over it all night, for it seemed to me important. I wanted to know.
At my singing lesson the following day, I plucked up the courage to ask Signor Isola himself.
‘Tell me, please, some of things that you have been speaking about with Mamma,’ I said. ‘They concern my father, and so they also concern me.’
Signor Isola took out a large, splendidly-embroidered silk handkerchief and wiped his brow, with exaggerated slowness, before replying: ‘Your mother wishes to know my impressions of Lord Byron, and I have been telling her what I remember.’
‘And what did she say to you last night?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It wasn’t in Genoese,’ I said. ‘I thought it might have been Latin. A phrase of some kind. A quotation?’
‘Ah, yes. De mortuis nihil nisi bonum. “Speak nothing but good of the dead”,’ said Signor Isola.
‘I don’t understand.’
He shrugged. ‘Your mother, she is a proud woman. She will not tarnish the name of a great poet with public slander; and even in private, to you, his child, she will say little.’
‘But... but what is there to say?’
‘Lord Byron was, many say, a genius. Those people do not often exercise the same moral restraint that others, less blessed with exceptional talent, are wont to do.’
‘What does that mean, if you please?’
‘Ah, Miss Byron, it is really not for me to say. He was a man about whom there was often... What is the word?’ He made a searching motion with his hand, as though rummaging through some drawer in his mind. ‘Gossip,’ he said at last. ‘Oh, yes, there were plenty of stories! Next time, perhaps, I could tell you a little more... But then again, you are only a child. Let us practise now a rising arpeggio, if you please, commencing on Middle C.’
That was the last time that I saw Signor Isola. But for the rest of our tour, the tantalising questions raised by our stay in Genoa remained with me, and now that we are returned to England, they remain with me still. I must – I must know what happened! Why did my mother and father separate when they did? Did they argue? Was there a misunderstanding of some kind? A tragedy?
