The Philosophical Breakfast Club

by Laura J. Snyder

  He was also physically fierce. Whewell was renowned as a “crack horseman”; indeed, it was said by one former student that “few men of his weight in England can take a leap better.” Watching him ride, people worried for the safety of the horse beneath him. Another student recalled a mêlée between Trinity students and an unpopular proctor who had ducked behind the gate of Caius. As the students were trying to smash in the door of the college using a plank of wood as a battering ram, the Trinity dons were called for: Peacock, Sedgwick, and Whewell. “On their coming up,” the student reminisced, “a townsman ventured the attempt of thrusting Whewell aside, whereupon that wondrous example of stature and wisdom took the rapscallion by the coat-collar into an angle of the church opposite and pummeled him unmercifully—a warning to us undergraduates that we had better take ourselves off, which we did!”46

  To his sister Ann, Whewell described Cordelia as “amiable and good,” and the one who “rescues me from a life of loneliness at Cambridge.”47 She was also rescuing him from the intellectually bleak existence of a country cleric—with her marriage portion, they could afford to take a house in Cambridge, and Whewell could retain his professorship and work on his philosophical and scientific writings full-time. She was, indeed, Whewell said, his “good angel.”48

  After a trip to Plymouth for the 1841 British Association meeting in August, at which he presided as president, Whewell was ready to begin his new life. He wrapped up his work as a fellow at Cambridge, grading the final set of fellowship examinations, and began to make arrangements for moving his belongings to a small house he rented in the town.

  Cordelia and William were married on Tuesday, October 12, at the little whitewashed “New Church” (new because only a century or two old) high up in the hills near Ullswater. Richard Jones performed the service, attended by the Marshalls, Wordsworths, and Spring Rices, but without the presence of any members of Whewell’s family. Although they lived nearby, Whewell had gently dissuaded his sisters from coming to the wedding, perhaps because he was embarrassed to remind his new in-laws of his humble roots.49 After conveying Cordelia’s invitation to Ann, her brother added, “You will do as you like; but I think I should advise you not to go. If you do, when the wedding is over, you will be left among strangers all rather in grief than in joy, and will perhaps find yourself uncomfortable.”50 Cordelia’s brother James lent the new couple his house on Coniston Lake for their honeymoon. However, an even more momentous event occurred, which interrupted the idyllic interlude the new couple had anticipated.

  THE VERY DAY of the wedding, Christopher Wordsworth announced his resignation from the mastership of Trinity. He immediately wrote to Whewell expressing his hope that Whewell would succeed him. Wordsworth admitted that he had held on to the office so long in the hope that the Whig government of Melbourne would fall, giving Whewell a greater chance of being appointed (Melbourne would have chosen someone known to be more liberal politically, such as Peacock or Sedgwick). Once the liberal government was replaced with the Tory government of Sir Robert Peel, Wordsworth made his move.

  As soon as Whewell’s friends heard of the resignation of the master, they went to work to secure the post for the newlywed. Jones—already back in London—penned a quick note to Whewell, urging him to rush to the city and start making the rounds, seeking patronage from various ministers. “I tell you frankly,” Jones insisted, “I believe there are intrigues on foot to set you aside.”51 Other names being bandied around included the young Christopher Wordsworth, son of the present master, and Francis Martin, the senior bursar. Whewell answered, “My dear Jones, your letter came like a thunderclap upon me, and almost deprived me of the power of action: however, we are going to set instantly upon the course you recommend … by coming instantly to London.… I shall try to see you at your office.… Events press somewhat rapidly on each other in my life at present; and I feel more need than ever of your advice.”52

  Herschel wrote to the Duke of Northumberland, chancellor of the university, asking him to petition for Whewell’s appointment. Hare wrote to Henry Goulburn, who had just been appointed chancellor of the exchequer for the second time. But even before anyone petitioned Peel on Whewell’s behalf, the prime minister had already recommended Whewell to the queen for the position. On October 19, Jones wrote to Herschel with the news: “Whewell is Master of Trinity—Huzzah!”53

  Whewell officially took up the position on November 16, 1841, just a month after his marriage. In a letter to her sister, Cordelia described the day’s momentous events. She watched from the windows of the Master’s Lodge as a lively crowd gathered on the Great Lawn. A little before noon, the new master arrived at the Great Gate to the lawn, just opposite the Lodge. He knocked on the wicket, the small door in the middle of the enormous iron gate. The porter thrust out his hand to take the Patent of the College from Whewell, and then handed it to the vice-master. The vice-master and fellows walked in procession to the Great Gate, which was thrown open to loud cheers and a sea of waving caps. The new master was conducted to the college chapel, making his way past the statue of Newton in the antechapel. There, Whewell took his oath. The doors were thrown open and everyone else rushed in, to the singing of the religious hymn “Te Deum.”

  Whewell later confided to Herschel that the Master’s Lodge was the first house he ever possessed, and was likely to be his last. “I sit in Bentley’s chair and listen to the ticking of Newton’s clock, and write with as much contentment as either of them can have had.”54 He told Quetelet, “You will easily recognize that it was the situation of all others in the world which I most desired, and even now I can hardly believe at all times that it is true.”55

  Four months later, Whewell presented to the college a marble copy of the statue of Bacon at St. Albans, executed by Mr. Weekes the sculptor. After Whewell’s death, the fellows funded a statue of Whewell; today the three giants of Trinity, Newton, Bacon, and Whewell, grace the antechapel together.

  BABBAGE WAS NOW very much the “odd man out,” having little to do with Whewell and Jones, though he would visit briefly with both of them at the Master’s Lodge of Trinity once in the 1840s. He was still corresponding with Herschel, but less regularly, and saw him infrequently. Babbage was spending most of his days holed up in the Dorset Street house, working on the plans for the Analytical Engine. He continued his active social life in the evenings, occasionally still hosting soirées, attending supper parties, and going to the opera and theater.56

  When Babbage was sent an invitation from Giovanni Plana to attend a convention of Italian scientists in Turin in August 1840, he saw an opportunity to publicize his Analytical Engine abroad. These conferences had begun the year before, with a conference in Pisa at which 421 Italian scientists were present. That meeting had been organized by Carlo Luciano Bonaparte, Napoleon’s nephew, and had the sanction of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold II, with whom Babbage had been corresponding since his trip to Italy in 1828. Plana, an astronomer and mathematician, had been awarded the Copley medal of the Royal Society for his work on lunar motions, and was chair of astronomy at the University of Turin. He and Babbage had met during Babbage’s tour of Europe with Herschel in 1821. Plana expressly asked Babbage to come and speak about his amazing new invention.

  Babbage felt his engine was unappreciated in England, and he rejoiced at the opportunity to publicize it abroad. He left for the Continent, accompanied by his close friend the Irish mathematician James MacCullagh (who would kill himself seven years later, depressed by the waning of his mathematical powers). Babbage brought models of the gear shafts and drawings of his Analytical Engine as visual aids for his planned lectures on the machine. His trunks were filled with other precious objects as well: two albums filled with Talbot’s calotypes.

  At the first conference of Italian scientists the year before, experiments in Daguerre’s process had been publicly demonstrated. In 1840 the calotype method of Talbot was still unknown in Italy, and men of science were anxiously awaiting details and sam
ples of the process.57 Babbage had requested that Talbot prepare an album for presentation to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Talbot put together thirty-five calotypes for him.58 Talbot had also been asked by the astronomer Giovanni Battista Amici of Modena to send a group of calotypes that could be displayed at the Turin meeting.59 Amici, director of the observatory at Florence, was well known in England for his astronomical research as well as for the optical instruments he produced. He made a special kind of camera lucida that was much in demand; Herschel, for example, preferred it to the type manufactured according to Wollaston’s prototype.

  The grand duke’s album has disappeared; no one knows if it was ever delivered. The calotypes sent for Amici were not, for some reason, received by him until 1842, at which time Amici displayed them at the third meeting of the Italian scientists, in Florence. Those calotypes are now preserved at the Biblioteca Estense in Modena; they consist of twenty-one images, including a self-portrait of Talbot, most of them in very poor condition, almost completely faded.60

  The conference in Turin was attended by 573 mathematicians, physicists, chemists, geologists, botanists, and biologists.61 Only some of those would have heard Babbage speak, as he informally lectured on his Analytical Engine—with the help of an interpreter—in his private lodgings. But the group was the first to hear Babbage himself speak about his engines.

  One of those present was Luigi Menabrea, a thirty-one-year-old mathematician and army engineer, recently appointed professor of mechanics and construction at both the Military Academy of the Kingdom of Sardinia and at the University of Turin, where he had studied under Plana. It would not be until the revolutionary year of 1848 that Menabrea would begin his political career as a diplomat for King Charles Albert; later he would fight against Austrian control of the north of Italy, using his engineering skills to flood the plains through which the Austrian army was advancing. In 1867, Menabrea would become prime minister of a united and independent Italy.

  But at the time of Babbage’s visit to Turin, Menabrea was little known, while Plana was an international star. Babbage paid scant attention to Menabrea, and focused his attentions on impressing Plana with his Analytical Engine. Babbage hoped that Plana would write up a report of the machine, one that would garner international acclaim for himself and his invention, and perhaps shame the British government into finally supporting it. After Babbage returned to England he waited anxiously for Plana’s report. Finally, Plana pleaded that he was ill, and burdened by his daughter’s unhappy marriage (her husband was so cruel that her parents took her back home after only twenty-three days of marriage and then tried, unsuccessfully, to have the marriage annulled).62 He told Babbage he was forced to pass the job on to his young protégé, Menabrea.

  In truth, Plana had not been convinced of the value of the Analytical Engine. Babbage’s friend Fortunato Prandi (a political exile who had lived in England since taking part in the failed 1821 revolution, which sought to establish a liberal constitutional monarchy in the north of Italy) had been Babbage’s interpreter on the trip to Turin, and he predicted that “Plana will not write anything about the engine. He seems to think that you delude yourself, that the engine, if ever executed, will be a great curiosity, but perfectly useless.”63 Although the good opinion of Plana—the scientist with the greater international reputation—would have counted more, Babbage would have to be content with Menabrea’s report, which was finally published in October of 1842, in French, in a Swiss journal.64 Before long the report would appear in a British journal, with the addition of descriptive notes written by a woman Babbage would call his “Enchantress of Numbers.”

  IN 1833, Babbage was presented to an attractive, confident, and intelligent young lady, who at seventeen was already as famous as many of the women populating the pages of our tabloids today. She was Augusta Ada Byron (always called Ada), the daughter of the great poet and former Trinity College student Lord Byron, who had died fighting for Greek independence in Messolonghi, Greece, in 1824, and had promptly become the iconic Romantic figure he remains today.

  Byron had met Ada’s mother Anne Isabella (“Annabella”) Millbanke in 1812. Byron, notoriously called “mad, bad and dangerous to know,” was freshly famous as the author of “Childe Harold,” the first of his epic poems. Byron wrote to Annabella’s aunt, his friend Lady Melbourne, telling her of his interest in the “amiable mathematician.” Annabella had been raised unconventionally for a woman of her time; her parents had engaged as her tutor Dr. William Frend, after his ejection from Cambridge for leaving the Church of England to become a Unitarian, and he led Annabella through the course of study a Cambridge student might follow: Euclid, Bacon, Newton. When Annabella refused Byron’s first proposal of marriage, he took it as a challenge, dubbing her “the Princess of Parallelograms.”

  Two years later, in 1814, Annabella accepted Byron’s second proposal. By then, however, he had become entangled with his half sister Augusta, who was married with three children. A fourth, Elizabeth Medora, was born in April 1814 and was rumored to have been fathered by Byron. Nevertheless, Byron and Annabella were married in January of 1815. By the end of the year, Augusta Ada was born. The marriage was, from the start, stormy. Little more than a month after the baby’s birth, Annabella took her and returned to her parents’ house, seeking a divorce. She threatened to spread the scandalous rumor of Byron’s involvement with his half sister, and he agreed to the divorce and consented to leave England for good.65

  After departing from England, Byron passed through Belgium and continued up the Rhine River. In the summer of 1816 he settled at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva, Switzerland, with his personal physician, John William Polidori. Also staying at the villa were the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Shelley’s future wife Mary Godwin, the daughter of the social reformer William Godwin. The stay at the Villa Diodati provided fodder for one of the century’s momentous literary events. Because the group was kept indoors by the “incessant rain” of “that wet, ungenial summer” over three days in June, the five decided to try their hands at devising fantastical stories. Mary Shelley produced what would become Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, and Polidori, inspired by a story of Byron’s, produced The Vampyre, the first in a long line of gothic vampire tales.

  Eventually, Byron moved on to Italy, and then to Greece, where he died of a fever in April 1824. His body was sent to England, but Westminster Abbey refused to accept it for reasons of “questionable morality.” He was buried instead in Nottingham. Byron’s friends raised £1,000 to commission a statue of the writer. For ten years the statue could find no home: the British Museum, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and the National Gallery all refused to display it. Finally, in 1844, Whewell accepted Byron’s statue on behalf of Trinity College, and had it placed in the Wren Library, where Byron’s statue stands today, welcoming researchers to the Readers’ Desk.66

  Ada (whose mother promptly dropped the first part of her name, Augusta, as soon as Byron left the country) never saw her father again. But he was ever present in her upbringing, as the antithesis of what Annabella wished Ada to become. To protect her daughter from inheriting the wild, impulsive nature of the poet, Annabella forced Ada to study mathematics, as she had done. From the age of four, Ada studied from dawn until dusk. Her mother supervised her studies with a firm hand; if she misbehaved during her lessons, Ada was placed in a closet.67

  Soon after meeting Ada, who was about the same age as his beloved daughter, Georgiana, the charmed Babbage invited her and her mother to one of his soirées, where they could see the demonstration model of his Difference Engine. Lady Byron told a friend that “we both went to see the thinking machine, for such it seems.”68 Ada was enchanted by Babbage’s creation. As one acquaintance later recalled, “While other visitors gazed at the working of this beautiful instrument with the sort of expression, and I dare say the sort of feeling, that some savages are said to have shown on first seeing a looking-glass or hearing a gun—if, indeed, they had as stro
ng an idea of its marvellousness—Miss Byron, young as she was, understood its working, and saw the great beauty of the invention.”69 When her mother took her on her factory tour in the fall of 1834, Ada thought of Babbage’s machine, telling Mary Somerville (whom she had met the previous spring) that “this Machinery reminds me of Babbage and his gem of all machinery.”70 Ada and her mother, together with Somerville, went frequently to Babbage’s soirées, especially during the London season of 1835.71

  The London season was generally considered to be in full swing between May and August. This was the time that young women were on display at parties, balls, dinners, and breakfasts in the hopes that they would find a husband. First, though, a young lady had to be presented at court; titled ladies, as well as the wives and daughters of clergy, military and naval officers, physicians and barristers, could be presented. During a single season a young lady might attend sixty parties, fifty balls, thirty dinners, and twenty-five breakfasts! After two or three seasons of such exposure, if no suitable proposals cropped up, a lady was deemed a spinster.

  This was not to be Ada’s fate. In July 1835 she married William, Lord King, who was elevated to the Earl of Lovelace at the queen’s coronation in 1838 (at which point Ada became known as the Countess of Lovelace). They were already corresponding in the spring of 1834, when Ada wrote to William, “Mamma and I are reading Whewell’s Bridgewater Treatise. How interesting it is!”72 The couple would have three children.