by Julia Gray
I thought often of Lord Byron. Almost half a year after the proposal, I saw him again at a ball. I was relieved to meet him and hoped very much that we would now be able to forge for ourselves a friendship. He was unattached (an affair, again of which I knew nothing, with Lady Oxford, who was married, had recently ended) and was spending a good deal of time with his half-sister Augusta, who had come to stay with him.
In August of 1813, I took it upon myself to write to him myself, rather than use my aunt as a go-between. I asked only that we could be friends. We wrote to each other often. And what letters they were! Whatever my pretences were – to both Byron and to my own self – the reality was that I was even more in love than ever after only a few months. I was very young, Ada, and very naïve. I did not know how I might elicit from him a second proposal of marriage, having rashly rejected the first. In the end, I did something out of character and invited him, in April 1814, to stay with my family at Seaham. No answer came. I waited in an agony of emotion. Finally, in a rare fury, I wrote to him, saying that he and I were in no way compatible as characters. This, for some strange reason, worked wonders. Byron proposed. At last! My friends and family approved whole-heartedly of the match, although it is true that some had reservations. I also received a letter from Byron’s half-sister Augusta, offering her congratulations.
When I saw him – when he finally arrived at Seaham – I had not seen him for over a year. I observed that his manner was distinctly odd; I took it for shyness. It was a difficult two-week visit, but by the end of it I was hopeful for the future, and excited to become his wife.
We were married three months later at Seaham. I have told you a little of the simple ceremony. I did not tell you how Byron behaved as soon as we were alone together in the carriage on the way to Halnaby, where we would spend our honeymoon.
‘You ought to have married another,’ he said, between bouts of fitful, toneless singing.
He later pretended that this was a joke, but I did not think it a good one.
At Halnaby, he insisted on sleeping alone. (Forgive me, Ada, if this is a picture too rich in detail, but now I have begun to tell the story, I feel I should not omit such detail.) On one occasion, I did join him, and he cried out, in the middle of the night, that he was surely in Hell. I had never known a person so changeable: sweet-natured one moment, frighteningly morose the next. He alluded to ‘evils’ in his past; several times, he told me that we should never have married. My maid saw that I was unhappy, and urged me to return to my parents. I could do no such thing. My loyalty was now to my husband. And besides, there were times – plenty of times – when we were quite content together. I was determined to make a success of the marriage. And, Ada, I loved him.
Our visit to Six Mile Bottom was very much at my own instigation: I wanted to get to know the half-sister of whom my ‘B’ was so fond. But as soon as we had reached the house, not far from Newmarket, I realised I had made yet another mistake. The pendulum of his moods had swung back again – inexorable as ever – and he was at his most contemptuous, his most disdainful. I felt that I both bored and antagonised him; nothing I could say pleased him, and at the same time I felt that I was being all the things that would irritate him most – righteous, didactic, all the things that you, Ada, dislike too – and yet was unable to stop myself.
Byron made it quite clear that he preferred the company of his sister. I was desperately unhappy. Not long after, I realised that I was pregnant.
You have asked me about your birth, and I believe – for you are as observant and sensitive a young person as I could ever have hoped for – that you have noticed that I am often sad on your birthday. Well, perhaps when I tell you of the circumstances of that birth you will understand why. By the time of my confinement, your father was most grievously in debt – he could seldom control his spending. His health was not good (he was taking regular doses of both laudanum and calomel, neither of which agreed with him) and his moods were most terrifying in their mutability. One night, I sat up in bed, alert to the sound of shots being fired! Tiptoeing down to investigate, I found my husband smashing soda bottles with a poker. When you were born, his first question was whether or not you had been born dead. I began to convince myself that Byron was mad; that he was not responsible for his actions. But responsible or not, he was beginning to cause me to fear for my life – and for yours too. And so, I left him, on the morning of the 15th of January. You were six weeks old.
At the time, I still believed that he was mad, and that – with care, and in time – he could be nursed back to health. Iwanted so much for this to be the case, for the alternative – a separation, and all the outcry that such a thing would entail – was worse. But the doctor found no evidence to suggest madness. And then I learned something about my husband that I had not known previously. Not only had there been several affairs during the short course of our marriage – with theatre actresses, mainly; but Lady Caroline Lamb also told me – not without a certain amount of malicious glee – that Byron’s affections towards his sister, Augusta, might well be more than mere fraternal feeling...
I hesitate, Ada, as I write this now, for I can hardly bear for you to think the worst of him, even as I seek to set things out for you as plainly as I can. Could it possibly be true? Byron often told me he had committed some kind of grievous act, but I had never known to what matter this alluded. Could the private jokes and close connection that he and Augusta shared mean something more than the bond of siblinghood? There were rumours too that he meant to have you kidnapped, and brought up by Augusta. Those rumours terrified me.
I have always been a woman of somewhat rigid ideas; that is one thing that I understand quite clearly about myself. I had married Byron – for better or worse – and marriage is a bond that is not to be severed. And yet, Ada, in the face of everything that I now feared to be true, I made a decision. There would be a proper separation – a difficult thing, yes, but, as far as I knew, the right thing for all concerned. The lawyer I saw, and to whom I revealed much more than Iallowed my parents to know, agreed with me. I resolved to say nothing in public – to hold my head high – and to survive the scandal of our separation.
And there was a scandal indeed.
Now do you see why I reacted so strongly to the events of two years ago? I have lived through it. Idle whispers leave long traces. The public, though fickle, seldom forgets. I sought to distance myself – and you – from the attention that Byron seemed to attract with every move he made. As for myself, I would try to do some good in the world; I would give you the best education that I could procure, and hope that neither of us would be tarnished by an association to England’s more famous – and most notorious – poet.
You may ask why I have continued to love and to speak well of him, as I have done, all these years. Firstly, Ada, I have done so for you: you were the product of a union that was not as successful as I had hoped that it would be, but that was not ever your fault. Secondly, he had good qualities too, so many of them – and it was those qualities – his talent, his humour, his vivacity – that I longed to preserve in my memory. It is possible to love someone who has caused one pain. And when he died – when I was no longer afraid of fresh scandal, or that he might arrange to have you kidnapped, or slander me – it was easier still to remember only the good things. As for Augusta, I promised Byron that I would do my best to protect her and her reputation. That I have tried to do, although the thought of you getting to know her, as you asked to do, was more than I could bear.
I know that at times you have found me cold, unforgiving, and overly controlling. If I were to make a list of my own characteristics, good and bad, I would not hesitate to list such attributes. But you must know how deeply I love you, Ada. Everything I have done has been for your own protection.
Your very loving,
Mamma
It is dark by the time I close the lid for the last time, and set the rosewood box on my
bookcase, out of sight, where I will guard it until she comes home. The other letters I will leave until later. They will serve as corroboration, I know that; but in a way, I don’t require any proof. What she’s told me is enough, because my mother is not a liar, and what it will have cost her to set down this history in such detail for me to read is unimaginable. There’s a bloody dent in my lower lip; I must have been constantly biting it as I was reading, without being aware of it. I am also very cold.
Fully clothed, I climb into bed, my mind – as always – full of pictures. The lean, lame poet, on his face a sneer that my mother interprets as a facade. Mamma at her writing-desk, noting down her thoughts and impressions of Lord Byron; composing verses that she hopes will please him; writing letters that betray her growing desire. A cry of anguish (remorse?) in a marriage bed. The pretty, plump face of Augusta Leigh. The sound of soda bottles shattering as my mother lies awake, so close to the time of her confinement. A bitter-white morning; Mamma stealing out, frost crunching beneath her boots, with me wrapped in a blanket in her arms.
Why did she never tell me all this? But even as I’m framing the question, I know the answer.
The last thing I think before I go to sleep is how much I do love my mother.
And if she really wishes for me to meet Lord King, then I will do as she asks, and meet him.
Epilogue
(17 months later)
London
August 1836
When I return to the steps of the Royal Academy, my husband is waiting for me. ‘Little Bird,’ he says.
‘Oh, Crow,’ I say, folding myself into his embrace.
They are funny names we have chosen for ourselves: I never thought of myself as a bird – indeed, I used to think that the Furies had a flustered, chickeny aspect to them, and I had little to say about the Furies that was in any way complimentary. But now I am Little Bird, and I like it: it makes me feel warm, and settled; curiously domestic. And William is a crow: a long-legged, dark-feathered, beak-nosed raven, with the sweetest temperament I ever knew.
‘Where did you go?’ he asks, kissing the top of my head.
‘For a walk. Did you see? There was a rainbow—’
‘I did see it, and I thought of you.’
My husband takes my arm and helps me up the steps. Ever since our son was born, three months ago, I have found stairs terribly difficult. (I found pregnancy difficult as well, and the birth too – but I dote on my son. We asked Mamma to name our firstborn child, and she did. The name she chose? Byron.)
‘I am all excitement to see the finished portrait,’ says William. ‘Do you like it?’
‘Well enough,’ I say evasively. ‘You may make up your own mind when you see it. I am curious to know your opinion.’
If I had not known all that I did know – all that Mamma told me in that long, heartfelt letter that must have cost her so much to write – I think I would have endeavoured to sabotage my first meeting, at the Weston House ball, with Lord King. Certainly, it crossed my mind. When I came downstairs at the Phillips’ elegant mansion wearing a dress that I had myself sewn – and my skills in that department leave much to be desired – Lady Phillips looked at me somewhat dubiously.
‘Of course, she is known for not taking much care over her appearance,’ I heard her saying later on to one of her daughters; I had no doubt that it was I to whom she was referring.
That slighting remark had a very odd effect on me. I realised, suddenly, what I was doing: consciously or not, I was undermining my mother’s every effort to ensure that I made a good match. I was trying to punish her, but really I was only punishing myself. I no longer wished to punish either of us. Chastened, I rushed back to my rooms and found something much more attractive to wear. I also attempted to tidy my hair. The looking glass showed an Ada who was, at the very least, trying.
‘You will have to do,’ said Ada-in-the-Glass.
When I returned, Lord King had arrived. I felt shy; as shy as I had done when I first met James Hopkins in the entrance hall at Fordhook. I had no intention other than to see what this young man, who had studied with Woronzow at Cambridge, had to say for himself; I knew he was a collector of Byronic things, and I resolved – as much as I could – not to hold this against him, for I had not been best pleased by the idea of becoming a collectible item. I did not think I would fall in love with him almost within the first few minutes.
But I did.
We stand side by side in front of the Portrait of Lady King, commissioned by Mamma to mark her delight in our marriage, and painted before my pregnancy was showing.
‘Well,’ I say to Lord King, much as Mamma said to me, not two hours ago. ‘And what do you think?’
My beloved Crow takes his time before replying. I wonder, as I watch him in his own silent appraisal of Painted Ada, what he sees, and what he is thinking. Is he perhaps remembering how I first appeared to him, at Lady Phillips’ ball? At that moment, he was looking, perhaps, for something that would remind him of the poet he had long idolised. There I stood, rather awkward and inwardly scowling, in the drawing room of Weston House. Did he see something Byronic in me (perchance my father’s air of awkwardness that so often came across as disdain)? In a way, it does not matter what he saw; and even if he did see something Byronic, I am convinced that what he really saw was Ada herself. We danced a quadrille, and then another. He was a great deal taller than me, and yet the discrepancy in our heights did not affect the quality of our dancing in any way. As we danced, we talked; I had never heard anyone speak with such passion for a place as Lord King spoke about his estate in Porlock. He described the way the wooded hills rose up from the coastal path with the look of a small, enchanted child.
‘I must show it to you,’ he said, suddenly almost shy at the realisation of what he had said. But I was thrilled by such a wish on his part, and echoed it with my own willingness to accept the invitation.
I am glad – I am so very glad – that I did.
‘Darling,’ my husband now ventures, having concluded his appraisal. ‘What, er... what has the artist done with your jaw? I like it, but it’s not a true reflection of you.’
‘I knew you would notice.’
I am about to explain the provenance of my too-large jaw when I see Mamma advancing, alight with pride. For her, this is the pinnacle – the highest possible Ada-achievement there ever could be. I hang, Painted Ada, in the Royal Academy, painted by a woman who is renowned for her skilful portraits. My jaw has been enhanced by Mrs Carpenter’s painterly skill; I am Byronic – which will be pleasing to my husband, who loves all things Byronic so well. Or rather: I am just Byronic enough. I am no longer a Byron in name; now, I bear my husband’s name; and it is an old title, just the right kind, just as Mamma wanted.
‘Come, William, my dear,’ she says. (She adores my husband, which suits me very well, for he has an ease of manner which permeates our own mother-daughter relationship too, nowadays.) ‘I want you to meet Lady Gosford.’
She leads him away. I am left with the portrait. It feels odd, indulgent – embarrassing, even – to continue to stare at this version of myself, especially when I have frankly admitted that I do not like it. I never cared much for looking in mirrors, either; I think perhaps I dislike the idea of myself being fixed, permanent, immutable – as the portrait suggests that I am. I also think that I dislike the portrait because I, Ada, have never truly known what it is that I really want to be. All my life (for as long as I can remember), I have flirted with identities – assumed them as I once threw an old shawl around my head and pretended to look more like my father than I did, in the gallery at Bifrons. I have delved into music, pondered verses, longed to write books, been desperate to invent and design... I have been a student, and also (briefly) a teacher. Now I have a new identity, of wife and mother.
The question I really want to ask, and have been asking myself all afternoon, is this: is it
over?
Am I fixed in my Ada-ness now, just as Mrs Carpenter says I am?
The people come and go. Mamma, of course, cannot be tempted away; she is enjoying herself too much. William drifts here and there, finding a watercolour of Lynmouth Harbour (very close to his Somerset estate in Porlock) that fills him with homesickness. The afternoon wears on. I grow tired, and start to wonder whether we can reasonably leave.
I notice Mr Turner standing beside his picture of Venice, holding forth with such vehemence and verbosity that I long to hear what he is saying. Mary Somerville – clad in an extraordinary orange gown of some oriental design – comes to say hello, clasping my hands in her own and saying how very, very glad she is that I made a full recovery.
‘Why, you seem a different person altogether, my dear,’ she says, almost conspiratorially. ‘Oh, that awful, gloomy afternoon is one that I’ll never be able to forget. You frightened me, Ada! Chattering of goodness knows what, and with such an expression on your face.’
‘I am sorry to have scared you,’ I say, meaning it.
I don’t say it to her, but I think afterward (as I have thought on occasion, since the time when I fell ill) that I have studied many patterns in my life – in music and mathematics especially – but I never gave much thought to the patterns in my own life. The habit I had, that Mamma compared to the flight of a butterfly, was a bad habit. Or rather, it was a habit I couldn’t control. It felt so wonderful, at the time, to flit and fly between passions, but (as I once commented to Miss Stamp) the wing’s up-swing had, perforce, to swing down again, and each down-swing was worse than the one before. When Mary Somerville counselled me to find balance, she was right, though I didn’t want to hear it.
