I, Ada

by Julia Gray

  Tunbridge Wells

  April 1834

  Tunbridge Wells, a town to the south-east of London, is Mamma’s latest discovery; it has replaced Leamington Spa as her preferred destination for relaxation and the treatment of minor ailments. We are strolling down the colonnaded walkway known as the Pantiles, enjoying the spring sunlight. At the moment, we are getting along rather better, Mamma and I; I think it is because I am so much enjoying my work with Mary Somerville, and I am grateful to Mamma for her support in this regard.

  ‘Did you know, Mamma, that they have come up with a new word: scientist?’ I say.

  ‘Who, Ada? Be specific.’

  ‘William Whewell – he studied with Mr Babbage, you know – in an article about Mrs Somerville.’

  I am delighted that I know something that my mother does not.

  ‘Hmm,’ she says. ‘I don’t know if I like it. Scientist: it has a harsh, almost reductive quality to it. I prefer the term “natural philosopher”.’

  ‘But someone who does art is an artist; why should someone who does science not be a scientist?’ I argue. ‘It makes sense.’

  ‘Perhaps you are right,’ says Mamma.

  We have reached the porticoed building, known as the Bath House, that stands at the end of the Pantiles. Here we sit in the courtyard, under the canopy, and before long we are brought some spring water to drink in tall glasses. One sip is enough for me – I want to spit it out, but manage not to – but Mamma drinks it down almost greedily, with the satisfaction of one tapping the wellspring of eternal knowledge. All around us are elegantly-clad women engaged in similar activity.

  Mamma sets her glass down. ‘The Bath House is built on the Chalybeate spring,’ she says. ‘The water is rich in iron. Very good for you. You ought to drink it, Ada. Even a few sips a day will make a difference, I assure you.’

  ‘I dislike it,’ I say.

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether you like or dislike it; what is good for you isn’t always what you want.’

  Changing the subject, I say: ‘Mr Babbage is thinking of designing a new machine.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘The Difference Engine can only perform operations using the method of finite differences – in other words, they are all forms of addition of one kind or another. But Mr Babbage now envisages a machine that can do far more complex calculations...’

  ‘Hmm,’ says Mamma. She looks at me in a contemplative way that I struggle to understand. ‘Why is he changing his aim in this manner – wanting to build something new before even his first idea has come to fruition?’

  ‘Because he has had a better idea,’ I say, remembering my Flyology experiments, and how a steam-powered airborne passenger horse easily supplanted a pair of wings as my primary objective. ‘Ideas can change, can’t they, Mamma?’

  ‘The best minds,’ says Mamma firmly, ‘see things through to their conclusions. I worry, frankly, that Mr Babbage’s ideas and approach are fundamentally unsound.’

  ‘They cannot be judged unsound before they have been tested—’

  ‘They remain untested because he has shown himself unable to find the resources to construct his designs!’

  We stare at each other – her eyes darker than mine, and bluer than my blue-grey, but each of us just as resolute. All around is a gentle sheep-like chorus of oh-my-dears and didn’t-you-knows; with our matching frowns and lowered brows, we make for a startling contrast to the other Bath House occupants.

  ‘You took me to visit Mr Babbage in the first place,’ I say, more gently. ‘You thought it was interesting—’

  ‘I like to see things for myself, and to judge for myself. He is not uninteresting, I admit. But I noticed, just now, a kind of nervous excitement, as you were speaking. It is most worrisome.’

  ‘I do not consider myself to be unduly preoccupied by Mr Babbage’s designs for his machines,’ I say, conscious as I am speaking that a tone has crept into my voice that I can’t quite control; I sound just as excitable as Mamma is implying. ‘It is not my fault that Mary Somerville is quite often a guest at his house, and that she quite often takes me with her—’

  I stop myself.

  ‘You think me unreasonable, I know,’ says Mamma, looking about for an attendant to bring her another glass of water. ‘It seems to me quite clear, however, that your health is directly related to the matters with which you tax your mind. That, indeed, is why I have always encouraged you to learn mathematics. Remember what happened when you wanted to design your flying machine: you were ill – incapacitated – for months, Ada!’

  I sit, shoulders slumped, in mulish silence, not certain that I deserve this telling-off, and sure that she is now going to mention Dr Combe.

  ‘Dr Combe was really most interesting in his description of your head,’ she goes on. A glass is set down at her elbow and she reaches for it.

  ‘I don’t know why you felt it necessary for him to read my skull a second time,’ I say. ‘People do not change in a year – and certainly the shape of their heads does not change!’

  She must, I realise, have been hoping for the good Dr Combe to revise his opinion of me somewhat.

  ‘Yes,’ she goes on. ‘You are too easily stimulated by the things that take your interest. He advises that it is a good idea for you to spend time away from London, and I concur. We shall take a tour, perhaps, of some northern towns, this summer. I shall arrange it.’

  ‘And what shall we do in these northern towns?’ I enquire.

  ‘For one thing, there are factories worth visiting. Perhaps, if you are to witness machines within their actual, working environments, it will enable you to evaluate Mr Babbage’s designs in a less... fanciful manner.’

  The matter settled, she drains her glass of iron-rich water from the Chalybeate spring with relish.

  Yorkshire,

  July 1834

  It is a blue-skied summer morning, and Mamma and are several weeks into our tour of the Industrial North. It is the second time we have taken a tour together. The last time we travelled for an extensive period of time, I was ten years old. Now, I am eighteen.

  I confess that I was not especially interested in the activities that my mother proposed (perhaps because she was the proponent), but I quickly became interested in spite of myself. What machinery we have seen! I had observed the Jacquard loom before, at the Adelaide Gallery – but what a difference it made, to see it actually put to use for the purpose intended. In Coventry, we visited a silk-ribbon factory, where the imported silks were woven into ribbons that would be used to trim dresses and bonnets. Exactly the kind of sartorial detail that has never interested me, but the manufacturing of the ribbon was far more intriguing. The factory was a draughty, dusty building, whose windows, though tall, seemed to let in little light; it was filled with the sound of looms, all a little out of time with each other, like instruments in an orchestra without a conductor.

  In Matlock, at another factory, Mamma drew a sketch of one of the punched cards – that innovation that permitted any picture in the world to be woven in silk – and I watched her as she did so, the way she drew her brows together in concentration as her hand gripped her pencil, the strength of her commitment to seeing and understanding.

  ‘It’s fascinating, Ada, is it not?’ she said, adding the last careful line to her drawing, which was an accurate one.

  If anything, however, Mamma had a greater interest in the workers themselves. She talked to them, trying to establish as much as possible about their lives. How had these looms changed their existences? What were the benefits? What were the disadvantages? How did they live? I was glad to have accompanied her to the factories, for this reason. Where I would look at a machine and consider its inventor, Mamma reflected instead on the human cost.

  Then, a couple of days later, we went to stay with the Nightingales, acquaintances of Mamma’s, at their house near Matlock.
It was a beautiful house, with a meadow beneath it that reached all the way to the Derwent river. The Nightingales were quiet, bookish people, with two daughters, Parthenope and Florence, a few years younger than I.

  At dinner on the first night, the discussion around the table centred upon the tension between the old system and the new one. My mother was saying: ‘In my youth, you know, it was quite different. Living in a small village, one was able to know the conditions – the wants and needs – of the villagers quite fully and easily, simply by going out of one’s own gates. One knew everyone. If a child was ill, or if someone was in need of something, one got to hear of it immediately.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said William Nightingale.

  ‘Now, in order to understand the lives of the workers, one must go to the factories to see it all first-hand,’ said Mamma. ‘We have been to Matlock, and Ashby; we have seen mills and kilns and furnaces. Above all else, I have been struck by the difficulties faced by the weavers whose jobs were imperilled by the advent of the new looms. I spoke to one fellow whose hand had been badly injured by a machine, and another who was very anxious indeed about whether he was to be kept on at the factory.’

  Florence – I liked the look of her, so pretty and so serious – said, ‘Once, a master weaver would have worked at home with a single-handed loom. The new system brings many looms and weavers together under one factory roof. It is a significant change. You are right, Lady Noel Byron, to think of their well-being.’

  ‘But don’t forget,’ said Mr Nightingale, ‘that the economic advantages such machinery will bring with them are considerable – mark my words, we’ll see more opportunities: more jobs, not fewer.’

  The debate continued for a few minutes, growing more heated all the while. My mother leaned forward, as she always does when engaged deeply in conversation. ‘What seems so necessary,’ she said, ‘is to understand the workers’ conditions. By understanding, we know how best to help them.’

  She began then to talk, as I knew she would, about education – Pestalozzi and Dr Fellenberg and her cherished agricultural schools. The Nightingale family listened with interest, and I detached myself very gently from the discussion, letting it disintegrate into unformed syllables, a kind of soft music. Here was Mamma at her best – seeing things that I did not see, asking questions that I did not ask... caring for the welfare of people in ways that I, quite honestly, didn’t think to. Yes: this really was the better side of my mother.

  We are now in Yorkshire, and nearly at the end of our tour. After this, we shall journey to Buxton, to spend the rest of the summer indulging in Mamma’s favourite activity: resting, and taking the waters. But for all that we have seen, and discovered; for all the places we have visited and people to whom we have spoken, it seems that my mother had quite a different reason for undertaking the tour.

  I found out what it was entirely by accident; she had left a half-written letter to Arabella Lawrence on the writing-desk at the Nightingales’ house, and I couldn’t help but notice that my name was mentioned in the first paragraph. My interest piqued, and my mother nowhere to be seen, I couldn’t help but pick the letter up and read it.

  ‘It has been of great interest to us both to witness the developments in the factories. I have always considered it of huge importance that Ada should observe such developments within their proper context... in so doing, I feel I am able to protect her from surges of excitement that might prove to unbalance her temperament. Indeed, I might add that a close study of Ada’s state of mind was, in fact, my primary motivation for planning this journey. For the most part, I find myself reassured...’

  I laid the letter down, feeling rather odd, not least because Mamma tends to express herself more fully in writing than she does in conversation. I hadn’t any notion that while we were making our careful sketches and observations of the factories that my mother was also making her own careful observations of me.

  Now, days later, I am still thinking about this. While I am glad that Mamma has found no particular cause for alarm – for if she had, she would no doubt be taking measures to address my perceived ailments, difficulties or shortcomings – I also feel that same strange, suffocating sense that I used to feel when the Furies lived at Fordhook. I am still being watched.

  ‘Ada,’ says Mamma. ‘If you care to look out of the window, we are just now going through the grounds of Halnaby Hall.’

  I stare out of the carriage window at the deer-park – lush, green, a vastness of acres – and am reminded of Kirkby Mallory. In the distance lies a Tudor mansion, with a wing on either side. This, then, is another of the Milbanke estates – not Seaham, near Durham, where Mamma spent most of her childhood, but Halnaby. I have heard her speak of it.

  ‘I remember this journey,’ says Mamma. ‘I’d ride my pony along it, aged eight or so. Extraordinary, really... to think of the passage of time...’

  Her voice fades; I can imagine her head filling up with memories, like a pot boiling over. I think of Young Annabella – a serious, diligent little girl (and a veritable genius, if Grandama’s accounts are to be believed), trotting along on her pony. That little girl could never have known that she would be married, one day, to England’s most famous poet.

  ‘Who lives there now?’ I say.

  ‘A cousin of mine.’

  ‘When was the last time you visited?’

  ‘Oh, before you were born.’

  ‘With my father?’

  I am, by now, so used to an almost-scientific examination of my mother’s myriad expressions that I am well able to decode the face she makes. The eyes: half-closed. The cheeks: pale, with a slight flush and the indentation that suggests she is biting the inside of them. The lips: set flat. Here, again, is her secretive side – her worse side, for it is this woman who I am convinced drove my father away, and alienated my Aunt Augusta in the process.

  ‘Mamma,’ I say again, rather sternly.

  She exhales through her nose, looks away, and says: ‘We came here for our honeymoon. We married at Seaham, and then travelled here by coach.’

  ‘Who was present at your wedding?’

  ‘Oh, very few people. My parents, and B – and Byron had with him his friend John Hobhouse.’

  I don’t think she means to let the endearment slip, but I seize upon it. ‘Did you call him “B”?’

  ‘I... yes, I did.’

  ‘What did he call you?’ I ask this decisively; I feel as though I have a right to know these things. She has made her study of me, all this time; now I in turn shall make my own study. Perhaps, in some way, she understands the logic of this, for she sighs a little and then says: ‘He called me Bell.’

  B, and Bell... The diminutives bring them to life, somehow, in the stultifying heat of the carriage. I wait for more; there must be more, and sure enough, faltering a little, unsure of the order of her words, my mother says:

  ‘We were married by Thomas Noel – the illegitimate son of Lord Wentworth, my uncle. It was the second of January; I remember it began snowing early that morning, so that the grounds were quite covered in snow by midday. I couldn’t come down to breakfast that day, such were my nerves. We married at eleven o’clock in the Seaham drawing room. I wore a white muslin jacket and muslin gown, with a lace trim. No veil. My mother wept – she was always easily overcome with feeling. As we were departing John Hobhouse gave me, as a gift, Byron’s complete works, bound in yellow morocco. I could hear the Seaham church bells ringing as he did so. Hobhouse wished me every happiness. I was never sure how much he liked me. I told him that if I were unhappy, it would be my own fault.’

  This is extraordinary: both the detail of what she has revealed, and also this last reported statement. I am reminded of our breakfast, not so long ago, in which, for some reason, Mamma started to tell me things that she had never told me before. I wonder, now, if it’s the geographical location itself that presses upon her, speaks to h
er across the gulf of years, and asks her to tell me what it is that she is remembering. Or else, perhaps, she has decided that I am worthy of the information, and deserve to be told it.

  ‘Mamma,’ I say, with a feeling that is almost like desperation. ‘Why... why did my father leave? Is it because you were unhappy? Or... was he unhappy?’

  ‘I think,’ she says, after a long and agonising silence, ‘that we were each, in our own way, extremely unhappy. Not at first, not really, but: yes, Ada. We were.’

  Silence falls again in the carriage, and for all that the day is swelteringly hot, I suddenly feel very cold.

  Buxton, Derbyshire

  August 1834

  Our tour of the Industrial North ends in the sleepy little spa town of Buxton. Lady Gosford is here – she is a friend of Mamma’s – with her two little girls, Olivia and Annabella. My cat, Mistress Puff, now a venerable old lady, is on almost permanent loan to them now. Grey-tinged, as though dipped in ash, she is irascible on occasion, her hind legs rheumatism-stiff. But she still enjoys chasing the sparrows that hop across the terrace in the morning sunshine, and mewing for milk, and I shall always remember the time when – as a lonely, book-gobbling child – I looked upon Puff as my only friend.

  There is, as is often the case with spa towns, not much to do in Buxton. More out of boredom than anything else, I offer one day to tutor the little girls in mathematics. I am rather delighted both by the selflessness of this gesture, and the idea of Ada the Tutor. (Also: I have realised, rather to my embarrassment, that I do not really think about others very often.)