Enchantress of Numbers

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “I would not have asked, but she said she would not miss it for the world,” said William, bewildered, when I read her letter aloud.

  I smiled to hide my disappointment. “Perhaps, like so many other things, attending the birth of a grandchild is an experience better enjoyed in theory than in practice.”

  “I’ll send word to her early anyway,” William resolved. “Regardless of what she says now, when the moment comes, she may wish to be at your side.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him, astonished that he would do otherwise than obey her explicit command. I was curious to see what would come of it.

  When the moment came at last, I was too engrossed in my travail to know or to care when William notified my mother, but it was my dear sister-in-law Hester who held my hand and wiped my brow when my child entered the world on 12 May 1836, his arrival coinciding with an eclipse of the sun. Afterward, as I held my precious babe in my arms, with William kneeling at my bedside, kissing me and beaming with pride upon his son and heir, we agreed that this celestial event was a portent of the glorious, happy future awaiting him, awaiting us all.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Days Steal on Us and Steal from Us

  May 1836–August 1839

  William and I christened our son Byron King, and we were as besotted with him as any two parents ever were of their firstborn. Though my mother had been ambivalent about my pregnancy and disinterested in the birth, when she met her grandchild three days after he entered the world, she was immediately smitten. His dark eyes, plump cheeks, and tiny cries so enchanted her that she wrote an amusing character about him to share with her friends, predicting that he would be in youth an athletic prodigy, as a man indifferent to the opinion of Society, and in maturity a respected professor of philosophy. As for me, I so passionately adored the perfect little creature he already was that I gave no thought to who and what he might be five, ten, or twenty years in the future. All I wanted was to hold my beautiful child and love him better than I had been loved.

  In early spring, my mother had volunteered to find a suitable nurse for her grandchild, one who would be firm yet kind, devoted yet not indulgent, energetic but calm, and intelligent enough to keep one step ahead of a boy who was surely predestined to be very clever. “Do you require a wet nurse?” my mother had asked me by letter in March.

  I was planning to nurse the child myself, as my mother and other ladies had told me that this would help me regain my figure more quickly. “Any qualified baby nurse would do,” I wrote to my mother.

  “Would an older woman be objectionable?” she had asked next. I had replied that on the contrary, someone more experienced would be most welcome, as long as she was spry.

  “I have found the perfect nurse,” my mother told me as she held her grandson for the first time. “She can start tomorrow, if that is satisfactory.”

  “Should I not meet her first?” I asked. “I don’t mean to question your judgment, but—”

  “You have met her, although you might not remember her.” My mother’s voice was light and high, the tone one instinctively adopts when one holds a newborn, even when one is speaking to someone else. “Her name is Mrs. Grimes, and she was your own nurse. Do you remember? It was so many years ago. She left our service to care for a sister, I believe.”

  My heart cinched. Of course I remembered Mrs. Grimes, though I had not seen her in more than fifteen years. I studied my mother, waiting for more, but she was entirely absorbed in cuddling Byron, and she did not notice my penetrating looks. I could never forget Mrs. Grimes, the devoted nurse who had cared for me so tenderly and tirelessly when I was afflicted with chicken pox.

  “I do remember Mrs. Grimes,” I said evenly. “I can think of no one I would trust more to care for my son. How did you convince her to accept the post?”

  I meant to convey my astonishment that Mrs. Grimes would hazard employment with our family a second time after my mother had peremptorily discharged her in the middle of a promised two-year engagement, but when my mother glanced up from sweet Byron, she regarded me with what seemed to be genuine puzzlement. “I told her you needed her, and she immediately accepted,” she said. “I remember her as a kindly, good woman, and very competent as a nurse, except for her tendency to spoil you.”

  “I don’t remember any spoiling.”

  She laughed lightly. “Well, of course you wouldn’t, would you?”

  I held back a rebuke, reluctant to give her any reason to second-guess her decision, so urgent was my longing to see my beloved nurse again. Nor did I wish to give my mother any reason to leave in a huff, not when she was so unabashedly eager to pour out upon my son the unconditional love and affection she had always denied me.

  The next morning when Mrs. Grimes arrived, I nearly threw myself into her arms, and we clung to each other, laughing and crying as if we had both gone quite mad. Her hair had become entirely gray, and her once reassuringly sturdy frame had been whittled down to a more slender and stooped figure, but her kind, wise eyes were the same, as were her voice and her smile. “You’ve grown into the strong, lovely young woman I always knew you would be, darling Ada,” she murmured in my ear, and I basked in her praise, fresh tears springing into my eyes. When I introduced her to my son, she picked him up with such strong, assured grace that I knew he would be well loved and protected in her care.

  With Mrs. Grimes’s help, I steadily became accustomed to the duties of motherhood, but I often gratefully acquiesced when she urged me to rest while she minded the baby. I had come through my travail fairly well as these things go, but I remained exhausted and sore for more than a fortnight after Byron’s birth, and the leechings and cuppings my mother ordered my doctor to administer did nothing to restore my vitality. By the end of June, however, I was ready to receive visitors, and one of the first was Mr. Babbage.

  He had brought a gift for my son, a soft toy horse he enjoyed gnawing on—Byron, not Mr. Babbage—and a set of building blocks for when he was a little older, finely sanded and stained until the wood shone like satin. Mr. Babbage unwittingly brought me a gift too, and not only the news from London’s intellectual circles, which I had craved. “I’ve improved the design of my Analytical Engine significantly since last we spoke,” he said. “I’ve concluded that using a revolving cylinder to communicate instructions will be too limiting, so I’ve decided to employ punched cards instead.”

  I was so delighted that I laughed aloud. “I had hoped you would come around eventually. Is this decision in honor of my handsome young heir?”

  “Not at all,” he said, smiling. “It’s in recognition of the superior wisdom of his mother.”

  Soon after Mr. Babbage’s visit, my mother left for Brighton to pursue a cure for her ongoing infirmity, whose vague and ever-changing symptoms had stymied Dr. King. My mother had become quite frustrated with his inability to diagnose her, and even more so with his tentative suggestions that perhaps her illness was all in her head, so unbeknownst to him, she had begun consulting other physicians. In my worry for her I had quite forgotten my own weakened condition, and up until the day my mother departed for Brighton, I overexerted myself tending her and fussing over the baby until Hester and Mrs. Grimes joined forces to compel me to rest.

  Rest came more easily when we withdrew to Ockham Park in the middle of July. Hester amused me with cheerful conversation as she pushed me in a bath chair around the gardens, and when I wasn’t nursing Byron or smiling upon him and William as they played together, he was in Mrs. Grimes’s watchful care, so I could always rest comfortably knowing he was well looked after. As exhausted as I was, I was also completely happy. I had honored my duty to give my mother and husband an heir. My childhood longing for a sister and a happy home had at last been fulfilled. For the first time in my life, I felt as if I had satisfied everyone’s expectations for me, and I intended to enjoy it as long as it lasted.

  By the end of July I was wal
king quite well on my own, steady and strong, and I felt more vigorous every day. By mid-August, Hester and I were exploring the estate on horseback, and by the end of the month, I had progressed to jumping.

  “I feel entirely recovered,” I told William happily one afternoon when he came upon Hester and me in the stables brushing our horses.

  “You look glorious,” he said, seizing me around the waist and kissing me full on the mouth. I kissed him back, my blood racing from the exhilarating ride.

  “Honestly, you two,” protested Hester, laughing. “Can you not at least wait until you’re alone?”

  With one last, quick kiss, we broke off our embrace, but William’s hand lingered on my shoulder and I anticipated joyful abandon in his arms later that night. I had told him that I would prefer not to have another child until Byron was two years old, so we chose our times carefully, although it was not easy to resist our mutual ardor. I was still nursing, which I had heard would offer some measure of protection. I fervently hoped such feminine wisdom was not a myth.

  By late August, Byron had become quite a little darling, bright and strong, and at just shy of four months of age, he had developed an experimental disposition. He was attracted to motion more than color, and to discordant noises more than pleasant sounds. One day, while Hester held him on her lap in the drawing room, he made a great study of her necklace, moving the chain into one position and then another, observing the patterns with serious attention, especially when the necklace shifted after he lifted his chubby little hands away.

  “Little Byron is going to grow up to be a scientist or a mathematician like his mother,” Hester declared. I smiled, but my heart sank to hear myself referred to as either, since domestic cares had made it nearly impossible for me to delve into my intellectual pursuits. Every month I vowed to resume my studies as soon as Byron was a little older, but one by one the days came and went, every hour filled with more immediate distractions, while my books and papers remained untouched.

  By late autumn I realized that my studies would be deferred even longer, for despite my intentions to delay enlarging the family, I discovered that I was again with child. William was thrilled, and I, too, was happy, but I will not pretend that I felt no misgivings. I wanted more children, certainly, but not quite so soon.

  With new resolve I set aside all frivolous distractions and resumed my studies, determined to progress as far as I could before my thoughts and arms were again occupied by a precious infant. Geometry and trigonometry appealed to me most at that time, and thinking that I could better comprehend certain complex topics if I had physical models to examine, I asked Mrs. Somerville to order some for me anonymously. I was still Lord Byron’s daughter, still an unwilling object of fascination before the public, and I did not care to have my purchases trumpeted in the press. My kind mentor readily agreed to make the arrangements, and in December, shortly after my twenty-first birthday, she also presented me with a wonderful gift of a telescope so that I might study the heavens from the towers of Ockham Park on clear, cold winter nights.

  All that winter and through the spring I divided my attention between raising Byron, preparing for the arrival of his younger sibling, attending to my duties as Lady King, and studying mathematics and astronomy. One might wonder where my duties to Lord King appeared on this list, and if I were not neglecting him by including those among my obligations as mistress of Ockham. In truth, William was preoccupied with concerns of his own at that time, the usual duties of his lordship as well as the newer responsibilities of establishing his industrial school. What little time he had left over he devoted to young Byron and to the never-ending improvements of his estates, building towers, adding gardens, digging tunnels to the back doors of the residence so that the arrival of delivery carts did not spoil the views. William and I loved each other no less than before, but we could not reside within the private, romantic seclusion we had enjoyed at Ashley Combe indefinitely, not with the responsibilities of family and the cares of the world ever encroaching. To me it felt as if William and I still stood side by side, hands clasped and fingers intertwined, but with a slightly greater distance between us. As long as we did not let go, and still faced the same direction, I would not worry.

  Byron celebrated his first birthday in May of 1837. As my mother had predicted soon after his birth, he had become a happy, vigorous, active little boy, crawling everywhere with remarkable speed and such confidence and daring that we were constantly on alert lest he cheerfully scramble into danger. He could stand if he clung to an outstretched hand or supported himself on furniture, and one of his favorite pastimes was to open and shut cupboards, studying the workings of the hinge and latch, much to the amusement of his observers. He loved to roll a ball on the floor away from himself, then crawl swiftly in pursuit, laughing and crowing like a hound after a fox. My only concern, and it troubled me only now and then because he was clearly a bright and attentive child, was that he had not yet spoken a word. Mrs. Grimes assured me that he understood nearly everything that was said to him, and that he would find his voice in time. “One day you will be unable to keep him from chattering about anything and everything,” she predicted, smiling, “and you will look back on these days fondly and wish they would return.”

  I cannot imagine how I would have managed without Mrs. Grimes, her assured presence in the nursery, her wisdom borne of experience. Never could I forget how my mother had wronged her, and I could only hope that my gratitude and Byron’s adoration would remedy the injuries of the past.

  Our little family withdrew to the enchanting solitude of Ashley Combe in June, and it was there that we received the news that King William IV had died after a lengthy illness. Although he had sired ten illegitimate children with his longtime mistress before he married, Queen Adelaide had borne him only two daughters, who had died very young, and so he had no direct heirs. The heir presumptive was his favorite niece, Princess Alexandrina Victoria, the daughter of his younger brother, Edward Augustus, and his brother’s German-born wife, the Duchess of Kent.

  It was well-known that King William had disliked his scheming sister-in-law, and rumor had it that he had worried that he might die before Princess Victoria came of age, leaving the kingdom in the Duchess of Kent’s control as regent. Through either divine grace or sheer strength of his own will, he survived almost a month past Princess Victoria’s eighteenth birthday. The nation seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief that there would be no regency, and my mother told me that Lord Melbourne and his political friends were greatly satisfied when the young queen cast off her strong-willed mother’s control. “Lord Melbourne remains Queen Victoria’s closest advisor,” my mother wrote to me from Fordhook, a simple phrase that implied so much more than it stated. My mother had long deferred seeking her cousin’s patronage, but I knew then that she would not abstain forever.

  Political intrigue compelled only mild interest from me then, for the time of my confinement was swiftly approaching. We returned to London in the first week of September, and it was there in our home in Saint James’s Square that I gave birth to a daughter on 22 September. William and I both had expected a second son, and I am ashamed now to admit that we were both somewhat disappointed even though our little girl was healthy, beautiful, sweet-tempered, and otherwise perfect in every way.

  I had scarcely begun to recover from my ordeal when I was struck down by a dreadful illness. I did not have a name for it then, but I have since learned that it must have been cholera. The devastating illness was well-known and feared in India, and epidemics had swept close to Europe before, but always they had retreated before laying waste to England. A few years before, however, the disease had finally breached our country’s defenses, and I was caught up in the final throes of an epidemic that had peaked in London earlier in the decade. I shudder from horror when I remember my suffering in the months I lay in my sickbed—the persistent, debilitating dizziness, the violent vomiting and unrelenting
diarrhea, the terrifying fevers and raging thirst. I nearly died—I was expected to die—and if not for the care of my mother’s physician, Dr. Herbert Mayo, I very likely would have. I honestly have no idea how I survived. At the time, it did not seem possible.

  It was not until late winter of 1838 that I emerged from danger, but the disease had wrecked and wasted my body, leaving me emaciated and feeble even when it seemed likely that I would live. By springtime I had steadily gained both weight and strength, but I remained quite ill.

  I observed then with sad resignation two unhappily enduring consequences of my illness.

  The first—it shames me to admit this—was that I did not feel as close to Annabella as I did to Byron. Within a week of her birth she had been taken from my arms for her own safety when my symptoms first came upon me, and the risk remained for months afterward. When the danger of contagion passed, I was simply too weak to care for her. She wanted for nothing, as Mrs. Grimes, Hester, and William looked after her with a greater measure of love and attentiveness to make up for what I was powerless to offer, but we lost those precious early days when I should have been easing her passage into the world, bathing her in the warm light of maternal love and affection, weaving unbreakable ties between our two hearts. In the years since, I have tried to compensate for all I could not do in her first months, but I know I often failed her, and even today I feel a lingering estrangement.

  The second unhappy consequence may have come about another way, at another time, even if I had not fallen ill.

  I have said that I was expected to die. William had no reason to doubt this, for by every sign and every measure, my sufferings appeared fatal. Devastated, William began to mourn me before I died, and to steel himself for life without me as the grieving father of two motherless children. I believe he began to detach his heart from mine in late December, when my death seemed imminent, so that he was not pulled into the grave after me. I do not blame him for this; he had to protect himself so that he could remain strong for our children’s sake. But I lived, and the heartstrings he had severed to save himself from fatal grief were never mended. He loved me still, but dared not risk loving me too deeply. After that I felt as if we still stood side by side, facing the same direction, but instead of clasping hands, we stood with only our fingertips touching.