Enchantress of Numbers

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  In the days that followed, my conversation and letters overflowed with descriptions of the party—of the splendid assemblage of intellectuals, the clever and delightful Mr. Babbage, and most of all, his marvelous Difference Engine. “I cannot wait until he invites us to another soirée,” I declared unfailingly every day as the hour we expected the post approached.

  My mother grew so weary of my rhapsodizing—and of my panicky lamentations when no invitation immediately appeared—that she declared she almost regretted taking me to Mr. Babbage’s that night. That “almost,” I knew, reflected her appreciation of the elite company and the marvelous Difference Engine, but not for our host. To my dismay—because it surely meant that she would limit our time in his company—although I had liked Mr. Babbage from the first, my mother did not care for him.

  First, of course, was the matter of his jest about country-dances. I accepted his explanation, and indeed thought it clever of him to encourage the Duke of Wellington to remember the Difference Engine whenever he attended a ball, but my mother thought the joke rather flat and beneath the dignity of both the machine and its inventor. Furthermore, she was wary of certain defects of character revealed by his physiognomy, and she judged him “too finical” in his choice of attire and furniture. “He impresses me when he discusses mathematics and engineering,” she acknowledged, “but he applies worldly means to the attainment of his ends, and he pays too much attention to trifles.”

  “What sort of trifles?” I asked, genuinely bewildered.

  “Money, for one,” she replied. “His desperation to acquire the patronage of the Duke of Wellington is most off-putting.”

  “The duke did not seem offended,” I said, a bit defensively, “and only those who enjoy great prosperity ever consider money a trifle.”

  “You do not need to educate me on the struggles of the poor,” my mother rebuked me, “and Mr. Babbage has done quite well for himself. If you cannot curtail this impertinence, Ada, I’ll decline his invitations out of concern that he has already been a bad influence on you.”

  I immediately apologized and promised to amend my behavior, though I doubted my mother would follow through with her threat. She had seen for herself that Mr. Babbage’s soirées were where fashionable and intellectual society mingled, and a lady of her rank and accomplishments belonged in that illustrious company if anyone did.

  An invitation from Mr. Babbage finally did arrive, and then several times more throughout the Season, and while my mother did not accept every invitation, she did so more often than she refused. Although at forty-one Mr. Babbage was nearly twice my age, we shared a love for all things mathematical and mechanical, and we soon became quite good friends. My admiration of the Difference Engine pleased him, and when he discovered that I could be a sympathetic listener, he confided that he had reached an impasse in his struggles to complete the full-scale version. “It’s a fraught and frustrating tale,” he warned, but I longed to know every detail, so I urged him to confide in me.

  As I had overheard him explain at Lord and Lady Copley’s party, he had been inspired to create a mechanical version of de Prony’s mathematical factory after touring it in Paris in the early 1820s. Within two years of planning and tinkering, he had the design worked out and the demonstration model completed, and he announced his invention in an open letter to Sir Humphry Davy, the president of the Royal Society. “A copy of the letter was sent to Sir Robert Peel, who was the home secretary at the time,” said Mr. Babbage as we sat together in his library, the conversation and laughter of the soirée a distant, pleasant hum in the background. “He had no time for it, or for me. I have it on very good authority that he dismissed my invention with the phrase, ‘It is an engine designed against our walls or some other mischief hides in it.’”

  I recognized the quote from the Aeneid. “He accused you of creating a Trojan horse to—I can’t imagine what. To bring down the British Empire?”

  Mr. Babbage shrugged. “Apparently so. Nevertheless, despite Peel’s ignorant and shortsighted rejection of my engine, the Royal Society gave me their wholehearted support, and with that, I was able to interest the Treasury. The chancellor of the exchequer himself invited me to meet. I put the demonstration model through its paces and answered all his questions, and he was sufficiently impressed to offer me a grant of one thousand pounds from the Civil Contingencies Fund then and there.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “The funding is significant, of course, but so is the recognition of your work by the government.”

  “The funding is essential,” Mr. Babbage said emphatically. “Without it, there is no Difference Engine, just ideas on paper and an exasperated philosopher tinkering in his workshop to no practical end. It is quite unusual for the government to fund research such as mine, you understand, but they thought my invention would have certain applications for the Royal Navy, generating accurate tables used in navigation foremost among them.”

  “Yes, I thought of that too, when I first heard you describe your engine.”

  “So, I had money in hand, or rather some of it, and more forthcoming.” Mr. Babbage smiled, remembering. “My good friend John Herschel and I celebrated with an excursion to see a telescope, and then I set myself to work. I built a workshop in the stables behind the house—I shall show it to you later, if you’re interested—and I converted an empty room into a forge. I also hired Mr. Joseph Clement, a brilliant engineer renowned for his precision work. Having seen the model in operation, you can imagine the vast number of wheel, dials, cogs, axles, and other parts I required him and his subordinates to make, all to exact specifications.”

  “With all of those resources at your command,” I said, as delicately as I could, “one might wonder why, eleven years later, the project is not yet complete.”

  “One might indeed wonder,” said Mr. Babbage mournfully. “My dear Miss Byron, I pray you will be spared the frustration and indignity of ever going hat in hand to collect funds that have been promised to you but are very reluctantly handed over. The money has come only in dribs and drabs, and on many occasions I have been obliged to draw upon my own accounts to keep the project from grinding to a screeching halt.” He sighed and managed a rueful smile. “Ironically, some critics and professional curmudgeons imply that I’ve squandered taxpayers’ money on myself, when the exact opposite is true. I’ve spent a substantial portion of my inheritance on my Difference Engine. I don’t regret it, but I cannot continue to do so.”

  “That’s why you’re courting the Duke of Wellington.”

  “Yes, ‘courting’ is an apt word for it. The ritual does indeed feel as capricious and calculated.” He sighed. “I’m confident that a gentleman with his prestige and influence could open the floodgate with a single letter, and he would be perfectly right to do so, for enough of the Difference Engine has been completed to justify every promise I’ve made about its capabilities, every expectation I’ve raised of its ultimate success.”

  I shook my head, sympathetic. “If so much has already been built, can you not continue to work with the expectation that the money you’ve been promised will eventually be disbursed?”

  “I did indeed do so for quite a while, but that arrangement has proved to be untenable. Early on, my engineer, Mr. Clement, who has nerve to match his prodigious talent, informed me that he could not pay his workmen unless I advanced him the funds. To prevent delays, I would pay him out of my own purse, sometimes five hundred or one thousand pounds at a time, and reimburse myself when the Treasury warrants were issued. This, eventually, became something I could no longer afford to do.”

  “Perfectly understandable,” I murmured, abashed, for I knew very little about how workers were paid. My mother always took care of such matters—my mother, who had political connections that were every bit as highly placed as the duke. Perhaps I could persuade her to use them to help Mr. Babbage, although I would say nothing to him yet, rather than give him fal
se hope.

  “So I advised Mr. Clement that in the future I should no longer pay him until I had received the money from the Treasury,” Mr. Babbage continued. “My engineer immediately ceased construction of the engine and sacked his workers.”

  “How disgracefully disloyal!” I exclaimed. “Did the privilege of working on this magnificent machine mean nothing to him?”

  “Apparently less than it would to you or me, but in his defense, he does have to eat and keep a roof over his head.”

  “You would have paid him, just not as soon as he liked,” said I. “I trust you fired him and hired a new engineer, one more dedicated and faithful.”

  “Even if I could find Mr. Clement’s equal, I cannot fire him. When he left, he and his men took all of my drawings and tools with them.”

  “That cannot possibly be legal.”

  Mr. Babbage spread his hands, helpless. “These were new tools, ones they built especially for this work. It is common practice that even if the costs of construction are borne by their employers, engineers and mechanics have the right to keep all the tools they themselves made.” His voice took on a slight edge. “The fact that I invented many of these tools, and that the workers made them from my instructions, apparently does not matter. Alas, the only way my tools and the men to wield them will be restored to me is if I pay Mr. Clement in advance for their labor.”

  “And you cannot do that until the Treasury pays you.”

  “Exactly.”

  I sighed and sat back in my chair, greatly vexed. “How outrageous that a bureaucratic snarl and one engineer devoid of a greater sense of purpose could prevent the completion of an ingenious machine that would transform the world.”

  Mr. Babbage managed a wan smile. “You praise me and my Difference Engine too generously, Miss Byron, and I am ordinarily the last person to object to that.”

  “But it is true,” I said, puzzled. “Let us have no false modesty, Mr. Babbage.”

  “I do not doubt that my engine could transform industry, and commerce, and perhaps the navy,” he conceded, “but not the world, although I thank you very much for believing it possible, and for believing in me.”

  I did not quite know what to say, so I inclined my head gracefully in imitation of my mother in a gracious moment. “I would be delighted to accept your invitation for a tour of your workshop at your earliest possible convenience,” I said instead. “For now, I would be satisfied with another look at the demonstration model.”

  “Of course, Miss Byron,” he agreed, rising and offering me his arm.

  I took it, and off we went, while the soirée continued all around us.

  Mr. Babbage remained with me for a while, but he could not neglect his other guests, so he soon excused himself and left me to admire the Difference Engine alone. But not entirely alone. Other ladies and gentlemen wandered in and out of the room while I stood nearly motionless, studying the amazing machine, but before long I became aware of the presence of another similarly still and studious figure on my left. A discreet glance revealed a gentleman perhaps two or three years older than myself, rather handsome, with soulful eyes, full cheeks, and a sensuous mouth. His thick light brown hair was parted on the right to reveal a high forehead that my mother would have approvingly noted signified well-developed faculties for Intellect and Conscientiousness.

  “It is quite extraordinary, is it not?” I ventured, glad to make the acquaintance of someone who seemed to admire Mr. Babbage’s creation as much as I did.

  “Indeed it is,” he said, but there was a wary note in his approval. “Ordinarily I am ambivalent about machinery, especially when men proclaim that it will improve our lives beyond imagining, but in this case, I believe Mr. Babbage is correct.”

  “I’m confident he is,” I said, lifting my chin. “And when his funding comes through, he will prove it.”

  “If his funding comes through,” said the young gentleman wryly. “The moment a gentleman perfects an invention and petitions the government for aid, he ceases to be an innocent citizen and becomes a culprit, a man to be shirked, browbeaten, and sneered at. I have never heard of any mechanician, inventor, or natural scientist who failed to find the government all but inaccessible, and whom the government did not discourage and treat badly.”

  “I hope you exaggerate,” I said, dismayed.

  “I wish I did. Of course, I speak only of the English government. When Englishmen take their inventions into other countries, it is quite a different matter, which is why so many of them eventually go abroad.”

  My heart sank lower. I could not bear to imagine Mr. Babbage packing up his demonstration model, notes, and drawings and carrying them off to some foreign land where I would likely never see them again. “Are you an inventor yourself?” I asked, hoping to learn that his dim view of an inventor’s prospects sprang from his own disappointment, or from total ignorance, in which case I could ignore it.

  “No, miss, not I.” He bowed courteously. “I am Charles Dickens, aspiring author, currently employed as a reporter for The Mirror of Parliament.”

  “So you do understand the workings of government.”

  He shrugged and offered a self-deprecating smile. “As well as any man can understand that inscrutable and indifferent beast.”

  I smiled, charmed despite his unfavorable assessment of Mr. Babbage’s prospects. “I hope that you’re a better writer than you are a prognosticator, Mr. Dickens, because I choose to be confident that our mutual friend will meet with success.”

  I did not know it then, but in the years to come, Mr. Dickens would become an enormously popular and successful author, and we would become great friends. As for his foresight—

  “Ada?”

  I glanced over my shoulder and discovered my mother standing in the doorway. It was time for us to depart, but it was with great reluctance that I bade my new acquaintance good-bye and cast one last longing look toward the machine that fascinated us both.

  I could not wait to see the Difference Engine again, to delve more deeply into its mechanical genius, to explore and understand all its mysteries. I cannot explain it, but even then I suspected that Mr. Babbage did not truly know how revolutionary his invention was and could be, and that he did not fathom, as I was beginning to, that it was capable of vastly more than he could yet imagine.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Commencement of Atonement Is the Sense of Its Necessity

  June 1833–March 1834

  As soon as my mother and I were settled in the carriage, I shared with her Mr. Babbage’s unhappy tale of bureaucratic stalemate. “That is why he seeks the Duke of Wellington’s patronage so avidly,” I said, “but I was thinking that the home secretary would have even more influence, and greater power to release the funds Mr. Babbage has been promised, don’t you agree, Mama?”

  She sighed. “No, Ada.”

  I knew she was not disagreeing with my point, but with the request she knew was forthcoming. “But why shouldn’t you speak to him? He’s your first cousin.”

  “I haven’t seen Lord Melbourne in years,” she said, frowning as she drew her fine wool shawl around her shoulders. “I’ve always thought very highly of him, but there is some . . . estrangement. His mother betrayed my confidence in a very hurtful manner when I was younger and relied upon her counsel, and as for his wife, Caroline—” She shook her head. “I’ll say no more of her.”

  “But you haven’t argued with your cousin,” I persisted. “And forgive me, but aren’t his wife and mother both deceased? Perhaps the time has come to mend fences.”

  “It’s true that my cousin never wronged me, and he couldn’t have prevented my aunt and his wife from doing so. The fault was never his.” She fell silent for a moment, then sighed. “I should resume my correspondence with him. We are family, after all, and it is not right to neglect those ties. I shall not, however, ask any favors of him on Mr.
Babbage’s behalf. Has he put you up to this?”

  “Of course not,” I exclaimed. “I don’t even think he knows we’re related to Lord Melbourne.”

  “Likely not, or he would be courting me as relentlessly as he pursues the Duke of Wellington.” She fixed me with a look that would suffer no disagreement. “I cannot beg favors of Lord Melbourne indiscriminately. If I ever do seek his help, it must be for something absolutely essential that I could not obtain without his help, and it must be directly to my benefit or yours.”

  “But helping Mr. Babbage build his Difference Engine will benefit me directly.”

  “How so?”

  I could not answer that, because I was not entirely sure myself. I was drawn to the amazing machine, fascinated by it, and I longed to see it completed, to have a hand in its completion. Not since my studies of Flyology had my imagination been so fully enraptured by a technological marvel. But that would sound like dangerously enthusiastic nonsense to my mother, so I murmured something about scientific advancement benefiting us all, and my mother sighed, and the subject was closed.

  Although I had become thoroughly enamored with Mr. Babbage’s marvelous Difference Engine and happily would have spent all day studying and discussing it, I was not permitted to ignore my studies, either of the intellectual or of the moral kind. I read and wrote and calculated and analyzed as always, communicating with my tutors through the post, and my mother and I frequently attended edifying lectures on various scientific, philosophical, and historical subjects. Dr. William King, too, continued to advise me on spiritual and ethical matters in lengthy letters, which I did not mind, since he truly was a good, kind man deeply concerned for my welfare. I sincerely wanted to be good, and with Dr. King as with no one else I could ruthlessly examine my conscience without fearing that he would condemn me for what I found.