Enchantress of Numbers

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “That I’m going to need a lot of strong paper and wire.” Reluctantly I added, “And that I should probably eat a little less at every meal, if I want to get off the ground.”

  “I admire your industry, but you cannot sacrifice your other lessons to this project.”

  “Five more minutes?”

  “Now. You’re already fifteen minutes late, and that will come out of your playtime with Puff.”

  Obediently I finished my French lesson, and then music, and then geography, and then my kindhearted governess agreed that working out the proportions for my wings qualified as mathematics, so she allowed me to race back to work.

  As the days passed and my plans took shape, I proudly described my progress in a letter to my mother. “I am going to begin my full-scale paper wings tomorrow,” I announced on a cold and blustery 3 February, not a good day for flying, but perfect weather for working indoors. “The more I think about it, the more I feel almost convinced that with a year or so’s experience and practice, I shall be able to bring the art of flying to very great perfection.”

  I thought almost constantly about this new art, which I called Flyology, and as I measured and cut and shaped wire, I decided that if my invention worked, I ought to write a book about the art of flying, illustrated with plates, and annotated so that others might duplicate my experiments.

  “If I do truly invent a method of flying,” I told Miss Stamp one afternoon as we danced a quadrille, for she had dragged me away from my work for my dancing lesson, “think of how useful I’ll be to my mother. I’ll be able to carry messages to her, or from her to her friends, much swifter than the slow, terrestrial post does now.”

  “That is very dutiful of you,” she replied. “Perhaps you’ll no longer neglect your geography studies when you realize how useful they would be for navigation.”

  I was so captivated by the idea of an aerial post that I devoted most of my next letter to my mother to the subject. “When I fly I shall be able to fly about with all your letters and messages and shall be able to carry them with much more speed than the post or any other terrestrial contrivance,” I wrote, my pen barely able to keep up with the flow of my ideas. “To make the thing quite complete, a part of the flying accoutrement shall be a letter bag, a small compass, and a map which the two last articles will enable me to cut across the country by the most direct road without minding either mountains, hills, valleys, rivers, lakes &c, &c, &c, &c.” I observed that my book on Flyology should contain a list of the advantages of flying to convince the skeptical. Signing off with a flourish, I declared myself, “Your very affectionate Carrier Pigeon.”

  In an unused bedroom, which I dubbed the Flying Room, I set up a laboratory for construction, and I devised a system of ropes, pulleys, and a triangular mount upon which I would build and test my wings. The more I worked, the more deficiencies in my knowledge I discovered. I did not know how a bird moved its wings, for example, or what kept it aloft even when its wings were not moving, but rather spread outward in a glide. When I swam, if I stopped stroking and kicking, I sank. What allowed a bird to soar when it did not stroke the air with its wings? Why did it not plummet to the ground? My ignorance did not discourage me, however, or convince me of the impossibility of my scheme, but instead compelled me to work harder, learn more, and vanquish every problem that dared to challenge me.

  Miss Stamp found it increasingly difficult to extract me from the Flying Room, but my diligence was rewarded, for by the end of March, I had overcome a very difficult obstacle regarding the motion and extension of the wings, and I had devised a way to attach the wings to the body. And yet many questions remained. “I have now a great favour to ask of you,” I wrote to my mother on 3 April, “which is to try and procure me some book which will make me thoroughly understand the anatomy of a bird and if you can get one with plates to illustrate the descriptions I should be very glad as I have no inclination whatever to dissect a bird.” Puff’s poaching had put me off that particular scientific study.

  I fervently wished I could consult with a real scientist, someone who could tell me if my plans were feasible, and since the only men of science I knew were physicians, I asked my mother to write to Dr. Mayo on my behalf, and any other doctors whose opinions I should seek. “Physicians do not build, though,” I told Puff as I cuddled her on my lap one evening, for Miss Stamp had firmly declared the Flying Room closed for the evening and only my loyal cat had the patience to suffer through yet another Flyology lecture. “That is a disadvantage. I need to speak with a shipwright, or an engineer of steam engines—”

  I gasped as inspiration struck.

  I could hardly sleep that night, so excited was I about my newest brainstorm. In the morning, I raced through my toilette, fed Puff, gobbled down my breakfast, and dashed upstairs to the Flying Room to sketch my ideas before I was required to report for my lessons. I had not abandoned my original design of wings that I would wear upon my back, but just as both curricles and barouches drove along the roads, so too could different flying machines traverse the skies.

  “Ada,” said Miss Stamp sternly from the doorway. “You are ten minutes late for French.”

  I gasped and jumped up from my chair. Surely I had been working on my new drawings for only a few minutes, but my governess’s pursed lips and furrowed brow said otherwise. Meekly I followed her to our schoolroom, where I forcibly pushed aside all thoughts of Flyology and concentrated on conjugations and cartography and every other subject in its turn in hope of winning back her favour. We had become quite close on our European tour, and my recent passion had proven that she was rather more indulgent than I deserved. I could not bear to lose her as I had lost so many other nurses and governesses.

  It was not until after tea that I was allowed to turn my thoughts back to Flyology, and then only because it was the subject of my latest letter to my mother. “As soon as I have brought flying to perfection,” I declared, after the customary dutiful inquiries about her health, “I have got a scheme about a mode of flying by steam-engine which, if ever I effect it, will be more wonderful than either steam-packets or steam-carriages. I will make a thing in the form of a horse with a steam-engine in the inside so contrived as to move an immense pair of wings, fixed on the outside of the horse, in such a manner as to carry it up into the air while a person sits on its back.” I acknowledged that this vehicle probably would present “infinitely more difficulties and obstacles” than my wearable wings would, but how much more magnificent it would be when I succeeded! I added a hasty line about my studies of Louis XIV, lest she think I was neglecting my lessons, I asked her again when she might be returning home, and I again signed myself, “Your very affectionate Carrier Pigeon.”

  Whenever Miss Stamp permitted, I alternated between constructing my paper wings and planning my equine-avian vehicle, which I began to call the Icarus and the Pegasus, respectively. I was happy and industrious at work, and frantic and snappish when pulled away from it. I did not leave the Flying Room willingly, except on the afternoon a maid bustled in to announce that Puff was delivering kittens beneath my bed.

  For the moment Flyology was forgotten as I ran off to observe this marvel of biology, which was messier than I had expected but no less fascinating. After Puff licked her babies clean, I longed to cuddle them, but the new mother—and who was the father, I wondered?—would not allow anyone but Miss Stamp near them. A few days later Puff carried her babies up into a crevice beneath the roof, where no one, not even the tallest footman perched upon a ladder, could reach them. It was a musty and dirty place, not at all suitable for tiny kittens, but Puff would do as she pleased. She stayed with them throughout the days and came down only for her meals.

  “If my wings were finished,” I speculated to Miss Stamp, “I could fly up there and have a look.” As I imagined myself soaring up to the rooftop to inspect Puff’s little nest, I was seized by the urgency to finish the Icarus at all speed, and
I ran off to my laboratory, refusing to come out for my luncheon and only reluctantly coming down for supper.

  The next day, the housekeeper brought me a letter from my mother. Hoping to find news about the bird anatomy book I had requested, or replies to my questions from Dr. Mayo, I eagerly read the letter, only to feel my soaring spirits come tumbling down to earth. “While I admire your diligence and toil,” my mother had written, “I am very much concerned that you think too often of these wings when you ought to be thinking of other, more important matters.” She went on to tell me that she would be coming home soon, accompanied by her friends Miss Montgomery and Miss Doyle, and Miss Doyle’s niece, but even this news did not lift my spirits.

  If my mother forbade it, Flyology would be grounded before it fledged.

  This realization sent me into a panic. So often had I envisioned myself soaring among the clouds that it was unbearable to think that I might never leave the ground. The thought that all my hard work might be for naught was equally difficult to bear. My father had his poems; my mother had her Infant School; I, too, wanted to create a Great Work for the benefit of the world, and I had determined that Flyology would surely be it.

  After collecting my thoughts, I cleared off a section of the table in my Flying Room, sat down properly in my chair, and wrote my mother a careful, sober reply. “I received your letter this morning and I really do not think that I often think of the wings when I ought to think of other things.” Quickly I added, “but it was very kind of you to make the remark to me.” Indeed it was very kind, although it hurt, because her concerns sprang from love, surely. “You have indeed thought of a great indulgence for me in every respect. In the first place I shall have the satisfaction of seeing you which will be particularly great to me now because you left me in such a state that I really thought at the time that you could not live.” When I thought of how terribly her cough had wracked her before she left for Devon, I felt deeply ashamed for giving her even a moment’s concern.

  I blinked away tears, cleared my throat, and refreshed my pen in the ink.

  I continued my letter in a very well-mannered fashion by expressing how much I looked forward to welcoming her and her friends soon—but then a strange impulse overtook me and I became determined to explain, very reasonably and logically, what my project was about, to persuade her that it was not a childish flight of fancy but genuine scientific research. Surely that she could understand, and perhaps even admire. “I have now decided upon making much smaller wings then I before intended,” I said, as I imagined a man of science might, “and they will be perfectly well proportioned in every respect, exactly on the same plan and of the same shape as a bird’s, and though they will not be nearly large enough to try and fly with yet, they will be quite enough so to enable me to explain perfectly to anyone my project for flying, and will serve as a model for my future real wings.”

  The next day I sent off my letter, and as the day was sunny and warm, I made a great show of ignoring my Flying Room and going outside to play. It was no use: I did not want to let go of Flyology and it evidently did not want to release me. In one of the fields east of the house, I barely avoided treading upon a dead crow lying upside down in the mud, and I confess I could not resist studying its wings. Ignoring my revulsion, I took up a stick and used it to move the wings this way and that and to roll the corpse over so I could examine the wings from above and below.

  That evening I wrote to my mother about my anatomical study of the unfortunate bird, and as I sat bent over my letter, Miss Stamp cleared her throat to claim my attention. “I would like you to add a note from me.”

  I winced. Miss Stamp’s postscripts were rarely favorable to me. “Certainly. What would you like me to say?”

  “Please tell Lady Byron that I have in some things been very well satisfied with you lately, but that you often have an idle manner which does not please me so well.”

  “Must I tell her that?” I said, indignant. Miss Stamp might not have approved of how I spent my time, but I had certainly not been idle.

  “Yes, indeed you must.”

  Muffling a sigh, I added the note to my letter and signed off as Carrier Pigeon, a small act of rebellion.

  When my mother and her companions finally came to Bifrons a week later, I was so happy to see my mother in such good health that I nearly wept. Her cough had disappeared, her cheeks were soft and rosy, and there was a laughing light in her eyes that I had not glimpsed since we had left Turin. I was as gracious and polite to her friends as I knew how to be, but they glared at me with frank disapproval no matter what I did, even the niece, who was only a little older than myself. I quaked when I wondered what my mother had told them about me to provoke such stern, fusty, censorious glares.

  After tea, while the other ladies took a turn around the garden, where they would likely take great pleasure in judging the flowers and deriding the shrubbery, my mother asked me to show her my wings. Delighted, I eagerly led her to my Flying Room, chattering as we went about new discoveries, unresolved problems, and the many practical uses for my invention I anticipated. How proud I was to show her the cables, pulleys, and harness I had arranged; to demonstrate the function of the paper wings; to explain my sketches of Pegasus, the steam-engine flying machine I intended to build after the paper wings were perfected.

  My mother listened carefully, nodding gravely and asking a few questions, which I promptly and cheerfully answered. When she had seen everything, she took one long, appraising look around the room while I gazed up at her, beaming, anticipating praise and suggestions for improvement.

  Instead she sighed heavily. “Oh, Ada,” she said, her voice both troubled and tired. “The exuberance you expressed in your letters troubled me, but I dismissed it as youthful enthusiasm. Even when Miss Stamp told me your interest in flight had become a mania, I had hoped she was mistaken. But when I look around and see all this—” She turned in place, gesturing with a graceful hand, her eyebrows drawn together in worry. “I see that we have let you go too far.”

  “Too far?” I exclaimed. “But I haven’t even finished. I haven’t taken a single practice flight. I was going to jump from a low height at first, you see, from the top of a barrel or a fence post, and as my wings proved themselves I would progress to ever greater—”

  “No, Ada.” My mother shook her head. “You have already spent too much time on this folly. Once I believed it was a harmless diversion, but it has consumed far too many hours—days, even weeks—that would have been better spent on study and improvement.”

  I felt tears rising. “Don’t make me stop,” I choked out. “Not when I’m so close to flying.”

  “Ada,” she admonished me, and I knew there would be no persuading her.

  Miss Stamp helped me dismantle the flight apparatus, gather up my sketches and plans, and fold up the paper wings. Furious, deeply disappointed, I wanted to burn every scrap of paper, every piece of wire, but Miss Stamp objected. I cannot say I was sorry when she collected the remnants of my dream, now sorted into haphazard piles, and carried them off, putting them in safe storage, as she said, in case I wanted them later. Why I would want them when I had been forbidden to fly, or even to complete my models, I did not know, and I was too heartbroken to ask.

  My mother’s judgment crushed me. I admit that I had not spent as many hours upon my other studies during my investigation of Flyology, but I had mastered my lessons all the same, and I could have learned to distribute my hours more evenly if given the chance. As the days passed, I told myself that my mother had acted out of love, that she feared that my wings would fail and I would be injured or perhaps even killed. I could not say she was wrong. New inventions often failed, sometimes with disastrous results. In breaking my heart, perhaps my mother had saved my life.

  I will not allow, however, that I had experienced anything deserving of the epithet “mania.” Interest, certainly. Passion, yes. Enthusiasm, per
haps. But mania—never. I deny that now as I denied it then.

  In the weeks that followed, I sometimes caught my mother observing me when she thought I was too distracted to notice, and the worry and disappointment in her eyes unsettled me. I resolved to prove that I was not manic, that I was as rational and self-possessed as any child of twelve and a half years who was not tainted with Byron blood.

  I devoted myself anew to my lessons with Miss Stamp, and in May, when I began my formal studies of geometry, I embraced theorems and transformations with unfeigned pleasure. By the end of summer, I had taken a great interest in learning to ride, which satisfied my mother very much, for my former wariness around horses had always annoyed her.

  And, as I had discovered, if my horse went swiftly enough, riding was nearly as gloriously exciting as I had imagined flying would be—although I did not share that insight with my mother, lest she denounce riding as too provocative of the imagination and forbid it as well.

  Chapter Nine

  As a Wild-Born Falcon with Clipt Wing

  November 1828–January 1831

  As winter came to Bifrons, I regarded the approach of my thirteenth birthday with dread and resignation, not for any superstitious reasons, but because soon thereafter, Miss Stamp would be leaving me to get married.

  The wedding was held at Saint Mary’s Church in Patrixbourne, a pretty setting for what was for me a bittersweet occasion. I was happy for Miss Stamp but miserable for myself, although I did my best to show only smiles and a few tears of joy.

  As my governess’s departure had already thrown the household into disorder, my mother must have concluded that this was as good a time as any to move to another rented residence, a large villa at Hanger Hill in the Ealing district. “I miss home,” I complained as I packed my books in the large, sturdy trunk with brass fittings my mother had given me for my birthday. “Can’t we move back to Kirkby Mallory instead?”