Enchantress of Numbers

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  As for Mrs. Somerville, she and Dr. Somerville had moved to Italy for his health, much to my sorrow, as I worried about him and missed her dreadfully. Mr. Dickens, who had married shortly before my son Byron was born, was now the father of three young children and the author of two more wonderful stories, Nicholas Nickleby and The Old Curiosity Shop, so preoccupied with family and writing that he hardly had time to pause and take a deep breath, much less visit me as often as I would have liked. Even Babbage was gone from me that September, for the Italian mathematician Giovanni Plana had invited him to attend a conference of illustrious scientists in Turin.

  Mr. Babbage had been invited the previous year but had declined, explaining that he was too busy working on his Analytical Engine to go abroad, but in spring the persistent Signor Plana had written again, and this time his letter revealed such depth of understanding of the Analytical Engine and its potential that Mr. Babbage was persuaded to go. I was thrilled for him because the conference would allow him to introduce his work to many important and influential men of science, and perhaps—if he did not take umbrage at some ignorant remark and blister the ears of his fellow scientists with a string of caustic retorts—he might garner enough support for his work that the funding he so badly needed might finally come through.

  Hester came and stayed with me at Ockham Park whenever she could, but without my intellectual friends, I often felt isolated and alone. In the last months of the year, when winter settled heavily upon the countryside—unusually, bitterly cold, driven by a strong, relentless east wind—I declared it “Mathematical weather,” perfect for settling into a comfortable armchair by the blazing hearth and studying, solving equations, and contributing to a new project, my Mathematical Scrapbook. The children were less content to be confined indoors, and they became absolute terrors, Byron in particular. He tormented Annabella with such terrifying tales that Mrs. Grimes and I could not coax her to sleep alone in her own bed at night but were obliged to tuck her in beside me. Even then nightmares would jolt her awake, her cries of terror making sure that no one else in the household slept well either.

  I confess that this incident made me briefly wonder if I had erred by not constraining my children’s imaginations as my mother had mine. From the time they were old enough to understand, I had allowed their nurses to indulge them in fairy tales and adventure stories, and both William and I read aloud to them often ourselves. Many of my happiest moments as a mother were spent wandering through the woods and gardens entertaining my children with stories of the natural world and the land of fairy, as Miss Thorne and I had done so long ago. If I had not cultivated Byron’s imagination, he would not have been able to torment his sister so, but even so, I refused to regret my choice.

  In early January I was rather startled to receive a gift from Medora, a pincushion she had sewn herself, brilliant red needlework and gold braid upon a dark black background. I perceived the colors as emblematic of her life: the dark fabric her dreary and hopeless past, the red and gold a mixture of bright anticipation about her future. “Will you thank Medora for me?” I wrote to my mother. “Tell her it is ready for use as soon as I want a fresh pin.” After admiring the taste and neatness of the workmanship, I added, “I quite revere and adore the Hen’s whole conduct and feelings respecting this singular and apparently unfortunate being. It well paints your whole principle and character.”

  I sincerely meant it. Medora and her daughter were desperate, and among all her relations only my mother had gone to help them, despite the many other demands upon her time and generosity. That was something I should admire and emulate, not spitefully regard as the misplacement of affection that ought to be mine.

  In her next letter, my mother invited me and William to come to Paris, where she and her charges had taken up residence at 22 Place Vendôme. I dithered, reluctant to leave my studies, but my mother persisted, and so we settled upon early April, when William would have no Parliament or business in Town due to the Easter holiday.

  The day after my mother’s letter arrived, William and I attended a soirée at the home of Mr. Babbage, who had long since returned from Turin, triumphant and hopeful. He had been received as a distinguished inventor and scientist by the illustrious gathering of learned men from around the world, and their respect and admiration for his Analytical Engine both gratified and encouraged him. And yet I detected a hint of resignation in his manner, and as soon as we had a moment to ourselves, I gently inquired about it.

  “I have been forced to confront a melancholy truth,” he admitted. “I see now that it is highly unlikely that I shall ever be able to afford to build the Analytical Engine.”

  “Oh, Mr. Babbage, no,” I exclaimed. “You can’t believe that.”

  “I do, my dear. My own personal wealth, though by no means insignificant, is simply inadequate to the task.” He seemed remarkably calm for a man who had concluded that his life’s work would never be realized. “Consider, Lady Lovelace, that the Analytical Engine would require the manufacture of tens of thousands of parts all made to my exact specifications by a skilled engineer whom I can barely persuade to answer my letters. These parts must be assembled in an intricate arrangement within precise tolerances in a frame fifteen feet high, six feet wide, and roughly twenty feet long.”

  As I imagined it, my heart sank with dismay. “That’s nearly the size of a locomotive.”

  “A small one, yes, and my Analytical Engine would require nearly as much steam as a locomotive to operate. An objective view of these facts leads me to conclude, not that it cannot be done, but that it shall not be done.” He inhaled deeply, squared his shoulders, and managed a smile. “And yet I will persevere, with no less dedication than before, for I still have reason to hope.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” I said. “And this reason is?”

  “My work was very well received in Turin,” he said. “It is possible that one of the eminent scientists I met there will publish a lengthy and detailed study of my engine, which would confirm its importance to science, commerce, and industry here at home. That could provide me with the evidence I need to convince our government to issue me another grant.”

  “I wish you much success.” His confidence emboldened me to say to him something I had contemplated throughout that cold and bleak winter. “If I may say so, Mr. Babbage, it occurs to me that at some future time—it might be within three or four years, or it might be many years hence—my mind and mathematical capabilities may be employed to some of your purposes and plans. If so, if ever I could be worthy of or capable of such service, you need only command me.”

  “Thank you, Lady Lovelace,” he said. “I’m gratified by your generous offer, and you may be certain I won’t forget it.”

  After that, I waited in daily expectation of an invitation to assist him in his work.

  In late February, our family moved from Ockham Park to our residence at Saint James’s Square, which William had spent the winter remodeling and was now wonderfully improved. I was in my study writing invitations for a party, at which we would reveal the delightful renovations to our friends, when a letter arrived from Paris.

  “My dearest Ada,” my mother wrote, “you may recall that when we last met, on the eve of my departure, I intimated that there was more to Medora’s troubling history than you knew, a darker, more disturbing secret that I could not bring myself to reveal. Now that you are coming to Paris to meet her, I believe the time has come to tell you all.”

  My heart thudded, and for a moment I shut my eyes and let my hands fall to my lap, still clutching the letter, which I now dreaded to read.

  And yet I knew I had no choice. Steeling myself, I opened my eyes and read on.

  “The young woman you know as your cousin,” my mother wrote, “is in fact your half sister, your father’s child by his half sister, Augusta.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  It Were the Deadliest Sin to Love as We Have Lov
ed

  February–May 1841

  Reeling, my revulsion and shock swiftly rising with every line, I read on as my mother described what she had learned of the peculiar, twisted, sordid relations between my father and my aunt that had led to Medora’s birth in 1814, eight and a half months before my parents married.

  Of course, I thought with each new abhorrent revelation, of course. So many curious matters that had bewildered me all my life suddenly made sense—my mother’s burning enmity for my aunt, my grandparents’ antipathy for my father, the opaque green curtain they had placed before my father’s portrait before packing it away, the “facts utterly unknown” that had compelled the Separation and had made reconciliation impossible. Then, too, there were the strangely unsettling verses that had troubled me when I first delved deeply into my father’s poetry at Ashley Combe. It was fallacy to believe that all poetry was autobiographical, but my father had been known to draw upon his own life and experiences when composing his greatest works. Now certain characters, motifs, and phrases leapt out at me like accusing witnesses. I understood at last why so many of my father’s poems after 1814 alluded to the anguish of forbidden love, to the torment of shameful secrets, to incest.

  Incest. The word resonated in my mind until I grew faint, my ears ringing, my heart pounding, as the truth gradually sank in, though I shrank from it.

  I sat for nearly an hour alone in my study, the letter resting on my lap, staring straight ahead at nothing, my emotions swinging from outrage to revulsion to resignation to despair. I knew I had to tell William. I dreaded it, but I knew the task would become only more difficult with delay.

  I found him alone in the library, frowning thoughtfully at a heavy volume of property law. “From my mother,” I said, handing him the letter and settling myself gingerly upon the sofa to wait while he read, feeling strangely bruised and exhausted. “I read it with no surprise.”

  His face steadily drained of color and took on a stony cast as he absorbed my mother’s revelations. “I cannot believe it,” he said at last, shaking his head, setting the letter on the desk and pushing it away as if the sight of it sickened him. “I never would have imagined it.”

  “I imagined it,” I said softly, realizing the truth of my words only as I spoke them. “It is exactly what I anticipated would eventually be revealed, as shocking as it all is.”

  “You imagined this?” exclaimed William. “How?”

  I shook my head; I did not entirely understand it myself. “I have so long suspected that this, or something very similar, had occurred in my most miserable and unhappy family that the admission of it is neither new nor startling.”

  He shook his head, disbelieving. “And your mother is certain that Colonel Leigh has no idea Medora is not his child?”

  “So she says,” I said, gesturing to the letter. “I’m inclined to believe so. He has accepted her as his daughter all her life.”

  “I suppose the fact that he has not murdered Mrs. Leigh is proof enough of his ignorance.”

  “In these circumstances, ignorance may be bliss.” I felt tears gathering, but I blinked them away. “It is a most strange and dreadful history, and I can hardly bear to contemplate it.”

  Quickly William joined me on the sofa and took my hands. “The shame falls upon your father and his sister and upon them alone,” he said firmly. “You and your mother aren’t complicit in their sin. You are blameless.”

  “My poor mother,” I said, feeling faint again. “To think of her all those years ago, such a young girl, purity and innocence itself, suddenly plunged into the midst of the greatest depths of depravity and betrayal—why, subjecting her to that is almost more dreadful than the sin itself!”

  “How well she has borne the burden of this secret all these years, in brave silence and dignity.”

  I murmured agreement, but I doubted that she had been entirely silent. My grandparents and my mother’s lawyer had known; of this I was certain. Who else knew? My aunt Augusta, clearly. My cousin—my sister—Medora, very likely. My mother’s deeply loyal friends—many of them surely knew, and their seething hatred for my father suddenly took on new facets I had not perceived before. No wonder they had regarded me with suspicion and mistrust all my life, waiting for me to tumble headlong into sin. I carried the bad Byron blood. My corruption was inevitable.

  I had proven them wrong, all of them. I was more Milbanke than Byron. I had to be. The alternative was unthinkable.

  I needed a day to reflect before I could reply, but I knew my mother would be anxiously awaiting my response, so I eventually secluded myself in my study, took pen in hand, and allowed my thoughts to spill upon the page.

  Dearest Mama,

  I am not in the least astonished. In fact, you merely confirm what I have for years and years felt scarcely a doubt about, but should have considered it most improper for me to hint to you that I in any way suspected.

  I therefore learn the fact with no surprise. I have always expected to hear it some time or other; and I only feel now upon it as I have long done, that the state of mind in both parties in which only such a monstrosity could have originated, is indeed appalling.

  I trust that my most unhappy and unfortunate parent is now freed from his shocking and I must think willful defiance of law, nature, reason, and instinct. From all I can gather respecting him, I believe that even his worst crimes originated more in defiance, than in love of the crime—in short, a good principle, the love of the exercise of free will, carried to a fearful and distorted extent. I trust it has been so, for I think it is a shade more easily retrievable than the absolute depravity which loves the crime for its own sake.

  When I reflect on my own natural defiance of law, of everything imposed, I sometimes tremble. But for my excellent understanding (for which I thank heaven and you for your wise cultivation of it), I should not have been one whit better or happier than my unhappy parent. I might not have committed exactly the same crimes, but I should have been just as bad in some line or other. I may well tremble, when I think on all I might have inherited!

  As I wrote, it became ever more apparent to me that I resembled my father in ways I had never realized. This frightening truth so upset me that I was obliged to set down my pen and take deep breaths to keep from breaking into sobs. If my mother had not carefully trained me in logic and reason, and had not vigorously commanded me to control my imagination, I might have committed sins as grave as my father’s. I nearly had, with William Turner.

  “If my poor Father had but possessed a little of my real philosophical turn!” I lamented to my mother when I continued my letter. “Nothing else, depend upon it, can ever keep that sort of character in order. Neither circumstances, nor conscience, nor impulses.” And yet, as distraught as I was, I remained hopeful that I—and Medora too—could overcome whatever sinister elements we had inherited from our father and lead good, useful lives. “Believe me, dearest Mama, to be your Hopeful Bird,” I wrote. “Yes—I must hope well even for Mrs. L, whom I feel is more inherently wicked than my father ever was.”

  Now I understood why my mother had kept my aunt Augusta away from me, and I was thankful. Medora and Georgiana had certainly not fared well beneath her influence, and I shuddered to think how she might have corrupted me.

  When I received my mother’s reply a few days later, I was surprised and disappointed to see that her greatest concern was not to comfort me in the aftermath of her devastating revelations, but to insist that, whatever suspicions I might have had about my father and my aunt, she had done absolutely nothing to sow seeds of doubts in me. “I know not, dearest Ada, what I ever said to you that could even suggest the idea of vice on Mrs. Leigh’s part,” she wrote. “Of her want of veracity and artfulness I have spoken. When you alluded to poems in which there was a remote reference to the fact, I have always avoided discussing them. It is, however, another proof added to many in my experience that the truth alw
ays makes itself felt, at least to persons of a certain kind of intellect, by means which are neither tangible nor imaginable.” She added that she had always endeavored to leave my father’s “aberrations sufficiently indistinct” whenever she spoke of him to me, so that I might still be able to contemplate his memory with respect and gratification. Her friends had considered this refusal to condemn him before me a weakness on her part, she noted, but she had no regrets. Now that all was revealed, “I will hope that the true charity which replaces the imaginary feeling is better for you and, if he knows it, more acceptable to him in his purified state.”

  I contemplated her words in bewilderment and uncertainty. Although she had never explicitly declared in my presence that she despised my wicked father, she had made it known in a thousand silent ways, and I had never doubted it. As to when I had first begun to suspect an illicit affair between my father and my aunt, I could not recall the precise moment or circumstance that first suggested it to me, although I certainly knew of several that had confirmed and strengthened this impression in all the years since. This I carefully explained to my mother in my reply, adding, “I should tell you that I did not suspect the daughter as being the result of it.”

  William and I had discussed this after the initial shock had faded and we could consider the facts more rationally. My aunt Augusta had been married at the time of Medora’s conception, so how could she know with any degree of certainty which of her two lovers had fathered her child? My mother seemed absolutely certain that Medora was my half sister, but William and I agreed that it could never be proven, and that the violent, ill-tempered Colonel Leigh must never be given reason to doubt.