I, Ada Read online

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (1788–1824)

  by Thomas Phillips (1770–1845)

  Bifrons, Kent

  June 1826

  Now I am ten years old, and we are renting a house on the Dover Road called Bifrons. At the end of a long avenue of trees, and not far from the sea, it’s a solid, symmetrical mansion in the classical style. There’s a splendid library; finding a book on the history of Kent, Mamma is pleased to learn that the house was once the home to Brook Taylor, a mathematician.

  On one of my explorations of the house and its grounds, I discover a picture gallery. At the very end of a long row of framed landscapes, concealed behind a green curtain, is a painting. It’s clearly been recently hung, because it seems out of place, somehow, among all the rest. No one should have to resist pulling back a curtain to see what lies beneath; I certainly cannot do so, and so I climb onto a chair, reach for the curtain and manage to drag it back in a single attempt. It is harder than I thought it would be – the curtain sticks a little, and the rings are reluctant to move – and then, all at once, the picture is revealed.

  I see a man of perhaps twenty-five depicted from the waist upwards. His head is turned to the side, as though he is in conversation with an out-of-sight interlocutor. He is wearing a costume of sorts – a headdress, an embroidered jacket – and has a sheathed sword (or that is what I think it must be) clasped against his chest. His eyes are a greyish-blue; he has a cleft in his chin. He manages to look both serious and light-hearted at the same time. There is a painted signature which I cannot read; then I notice the small inscription on the frame itself.

  GEORGE GORDON

  6th BARON BYRON

  A thump of recognition sweeps through me: my father! How was it that I have never before seen this picture? It was my understanding that Mamma had no pictures of my father – I asked about it once, and was told that he had hated to have his likeness taken by anyone, and thus there were no portraits, even miniatures, in existence.

  Clearly a lie.

  Not a day passes, after this, when I don’t go to see the portrait, even for a solitary minute. I grow fascinated by it, rotating it in my Ada-brain like a spinning top. What was my father thinking, as he sat for the artist? What was he writing at the time? Had he met my mother? To what stage had their courtship progressed? My mind ventures into realms of alternatives and possibilities; every time I go to the gallery, some new thought occurs to me.

  But there is one thing that irritates me: no matter how hard I try, I just can’t find any resemblance between me and the man in the picture. Even when I press my face close to the looking glass in my room, late at night, and attempt unsuccessfully to mould my features into the same expression that he wears in the picture, I find nothing.

  One quiet June afternoon, my new governess and I are working together in the schoolroom. My new governess’ name is Miss Charlotte Stamp, and she is a veritable treasure. She always knows when my head aches too much to study, and reads aloud to me instead; she willingly follows the will-o’-the-wisps of my inclinations, teaching me about the historical periods that interest me, rather than those that I am meant to be reading about. She notices that I find it hard, sometimes, to grip my pencil, and teaches me to relax my hand when I write. She plays chess with me, and dances with me, and laughs at the things I say. Oh, the things we talk about! Arrowroot and foxgloves and acorns, and the behaviour of water, and how you might construct a boat; and why it is always a good idea to be kind to animals, and what icebergs might contain apart from ice. The days pass with an agreeable quickness under her tutelage.

  I am glad that Miss Stamp is here, because I have, I confess, been very lonely. 1825 was a year of change in our little family. My grandfather, Sir Ralph, died and was buried with Grandmama. My mother became known as Lady Noel Byron, and seemed to me to grow slightly in stature with this new name. She inherited a vast fortune. Sometimes I overheard her conducting meetings in the drawing room, in which she discussed her intentions in her usual clear-headed manner.

  ‘I am quite determined,’ she would say, ‘to do good.’

  But with power and money seemed to come great fatigue; she spent long periods away at Leamington Spa or Hastings, engaging different physicians and experimenting with cures. At these times, I was left alone with Puff and Nanny Briggs, and largely had to entertain myself. This I did through reading; I had always enjoyed reading, but it was then that I began to subsist on a veritable diet of books. The Baillie sisters were friends of Walter Scott’s, and gave me Ivanhoe, which I devoured; I borrowed English Stories from my friend Flora, and read – with not too much difficulty, for my French was really rather good – some enchanting French fairy tales. I came up with a phrase to describe my burgeoning passion, which was Gobblebook, as in ‘I am Gobblebook’. And gobble books I did, especially on those long afternoons when there was no one to play with, and no one to talk to; when there was no Grandpapa to crease his ruddy cheeks in an affectionate grin, and there was no Mamma to make sure that I was still doing my sums.

  Now I have Miss Stamp with whom to do sums, and I am all the happier for it. We are at present studying the Rule of Three, so important that it is often referred to in books as the Golden Rule. The Rule of Three is essentially a question of proportion; you use your knowledge of two things in order to work out the value of a third, unknown thing. The first question is an easy one, requiring only minimal working-out:

  If two loaves of bread cost sixpence, how much will three loaves cost?

  ‘In this instance,’ I say, thinking aloud for the benefit of Miss Stamp, ‘we will name our quantities as follows: a, b and c, where a is two, the number of loaves; b is six, the cost of these two loaves; and c is three, the number of loaves for which we need to calculate the cost. We will then perform the calculation c times b divided by a; that is to say three times six, divided by two, which gives us nine. The answer to the question, therefore, is ninepence.’

  ‘Very good,’ says Miss Stamp.

  We move on to the Double Rule of Three, which I find much harder, because we are dealing now with five known quantities, and one unknown. It can be very confusing. I reread the question in the book which Miss Stamp is obligingly holding open at the right page.

  ‘If six men can mow twenty-four acres in eight days, in how many days can four men mow twelve acres?’

  I stare in frustration at the question, scribbling one incorrect equation, and then another. Miss Stamp allows me to notice and address my own errors – this is one of her nicest qualities, I think – and does not tell me the solution. Eventually, gently, she shows me that I need to rearrange the numerator and denominator in one place, and finally the answer becomes clear – six days – and I sigh in relief.

  ‘It’s like looking into swirling water,’ I tell her. ‘Water that’s really muddy, but then suddenly grows clean.’

  ‘What a lovely way of putting it,’ says Miss Stamp.

  ‘Miss Stamp,’ I say suddenly. ‘Would you come with me to look at my father’s portrait?’

  I have not told Mamma about my daily practice of visiting the picture – I prefer to keep it a secret, since I am gradually learning that she reacts to any mention of my father in a strange, unpredictable manner – but Miss Stamp is another matter. She is not the kind of governess I care to keep secrets from, and soon I am leading her through Bifrons to the gallery, safe in the knowledge that Mamma is out. Moments later, we are standing beneath the picture, the curtain drawn back. Usually, I find myself forcefully drawn to my father’s face, but today I am more interested in looking at Miss Stamp’s. I am keen to know what she really thinks.

  ‘I do see a similarity,’ she says, frowning a little in her effort to judge our respective physiognomies.

  ‘Do you?’ I say gloomily. ‘I really don’t. I think we are simply not alike at all.’

  ‘Wait here,’ says Miss Stamp suddenly, and goes flying off down the cor
ridor. That’s another thing I like about her – she is given to impetuous bursts of fancy, not unlike mine. Minutes later, my governess returns with her arms full of fabric – cast-off shawls and fur-lined pelisses and so forth from the dressing-up chest in the playroom. At once, I see what she has in mind; we assemble a costume to rival Lord Byron’s: a swatch of tartan, wrapped thrice around my head, becomes a sort of turban, and a black jacket with gold embroidery proves a not-too-distant match for his own. Miss Stamp, who seems to know more than I do, tells me that the outfit he wears is Albanian. I wonder why; I wonder what connections he had with that particular country.

  ‘Did you know that my father did not want me to turn out poetical?’ I say, as we fashion a sword out of card, engrossed in our work.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘He wrote and told Mamma so, not long before he died.’

  Miss Stamp suppresses a laugh. ‘But he did not do so badly by poetry himself,’ she points out.

  ‘Perhaps one poet is enough in any family,’ I say.

  ‘It might depend upon the nature and quality of the poetry in question,’ says my governess, quite gravely. ‘Now, Ada, you must stand like... like so. Head up a little. Yes!’

  I am, by now, laughing so much that it’s all I can do not to double over. With difficulty, I straighten my spine. I glance behind me, checking once more the specificities of my father’s pose. I fold my arms and look meaningfully into the distance. Miss Stamp arranges a fold of material over my arm. ‘Wonderful!’ she says, clapping her hands – although she does this rather mutedly, lest anyone should hear us.

  And suddenly – suddenly – everything vanishes. I can... I can feel him in the room next to me, his movements, his posture mirroring mine exactly. It fairly freezes the breath in my chest; it is as though (and I will remember this quite clearly for many, many years) there is a ghost in the gallery. Yes. He is here with me. He turns; he catches my eye, and slowly, with approval, he nods and then smiles. It is almost as though he is saying: there is a resemblance, Ada, and don’t ever forget it.

  ‘I won’t,’ I whisper, hoarse-voiced.

  ‘Ada, are you quite well?’ says Miss Stamp.

  I look around, collecting myself. The ghost-feeling is gone; all that remains is the gallery, my governess, and some clothes from the dressing-up box.

  ‘You were talking to yourself,’ says my governess.

  ‘I forgot what I was about,’ I tell her. I do not keep secrets from Miss Stamp, but there are some things, I realise now, that are just too precious to tell.

  For a moment, I felt something that I have never once felt, in my younger years, for my father – George Gordon, 6th Baron Byron – because I did not have the wherewithal to feel it.

  Love.

  Bifrons, Kent

  June 1826

  Not long after the incident of the ghost in the gallery, Mamma makes an exciting announcement. ‘We are to take a tour of Europe,’ she declares over dinner. ‘There are a great many places that I want to go, and it will do you a world of good, Ada, after your ill-health, to see something of the Continent.’

  The news comes as the most wonderful surprise: she is speaking of a Grand Tour, in the old tradition, and I can scarcely believe it. ‘Will we go alone, Mamma?’ I ask, putting down my soup spoon with a clatter.

  ‘No, indeed, Ada. My cousin Robert, and a number of my friends will join us at various times. Miss Montgomery, and Mrs Siddons and Mrs Chaloner.’

  I have always adored Mary Montgomery – there are times when I think of her as a relation, and not simply a friend of Mamma’s; I believe that Mary is as interested in my education as my mother is. But while I also like Harriet Siddons, an actress and passionate educational reformer who engages in the longest conversations with Mamma on the subject, I am less enthusiastic about Louisa Chaloner. I have never forgotten that she once told me I was not beautiful.

  ‘What about Miss Stamp?’ I say, suddenly worried that my new-ish governess will not be coming with us.

  ‘Of course we shall have the pleasure of the company of Miss Stamp,’ says Mamma. ‘Now that your health is a little better, there is no reason for the pace of your studies to abate.’

  Plans develop most enticingly. Clothing and sundry necessities must be bought; letters sent, arrangements made for accommodation and transport; our possessions packed into trunks... at times, I am so filled with anticipation that I can barely eat. My dreams, always colourful, grow more vivid and delicious than ever, loaded with lofty castles, rolling hills, elaborately-dressed noblemen; thick, dark forests teeming with wolves, and long golden beaches fringing unfamiliar seas. I pore over the atlas given to me by the Baillie sisters for hours, and Miss Stamp helps me to draw into my commonplace book the route Mamma intends us to take. Mamma says that we will be away for as long as a year, and perhaps longer.

  ‘It will be the furthest geographical distance I have ever been from home,’ I tell Miss Stamp, as we sort through the books that we want to take with us. ‘The same is true for Mamma too. Why do you suppose she has had such a change of heart? Perhaps the spirit of adventure has come upon her.’

  ‘You must remember, Ada, that England and France are no longer at war; that, to me, seems like the primary reason,’ says Miss Stamp, rescuing the books I have piled haphazardly onto a chair from near-collapse. ‘There’s also the matter of your grandparents,’ she adds gently. ‘Now they are deceased, your mother is more at liberty to plan this kind of lengthy journey. I believe, moreover, that one of your mother’s primary motives for this trip is educational. She wants to visit the famed Hofwyl Institute in Switzerland.’

  It is true that Mamma has been talking for some time about her admiration for the founder of the Swiss institute, Dr Fellenberg, and his methods. It is in her nature to need to see how things work, and to show me how they work also; I think of our early visit to the glass factory in the North of England – her pale, serious face as she pointed out various intricacies of the operation. ‘Do you see, Ada? Do you see?’ she would say, and I would look, and try to understand.

  ‘We must take Walkingame,’ says Miss Stamp, selecting a calf-bound textbook from the pile. ‘And Pasley’s Practical Geometry Method. We will have to keep up your arithmetic.’

  On my dressing table is a small box, silk-lined, that contains the handful of items that my father sent me in the years before his death. There is a talismanic ring, wonderfully and surprisingly heavy to hold, and a locket that bears the inscription ‘Water is thicker than blood’. I wonder if I should take the little box with me – it seems wrong, somehow, to leave it for a year or more, unopened... but then I think of the highwaymen that might very well stalk the roads of the Continent, waiting to pounce on wealthy voyagers, and decide that Bifrons is a safer place for my treasures.

  ‘And what’s this little book, Ada?’ says Miss Stamp.

  ‘Oh, just a notebook,’ I say, taking it. ‘A book of poems.’

  ‘Your poems?’

  ‘Yes.’ I’d almost forgotten about them: a hotchpotch collection of verses, written down in odd moments. Limericks, acrostics – any kind of poem I could think of, really. None particularly good. But Miss Stamp is keen to hear one, and so – rather shyly – I select one that I don’t think is too badly-constructed, and begin:

  ‘My name is Ada Byron, and I see the world in numbers.

  Once I saw in pairs: eyes, cuffs, slippers;

  Then I saw in threes: good, better, best;

  Four compass-points: North, South, East, West.

  Five upon my fingers, and ten upon my toes.

  For the world contains more numbers than anybody knows.’

  ‘Oh, but it’s charming, Ada! When did you write that?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I say, squinting at the date at the bottom of the page. ‘I think it was when I had begun arithmetic properly.’

  For a while, ne
ither of us speaks. I don’t know what Miss Stamp is thinking about, as we continue to sift through the books on the shelves, each choosing what she feels might be most useful for a tour of the Continent, and what might reasonably be left behind. It’s a warm day; the windows are shut, and I fall, as I so often do, into a kind of daze. And all the while the books mount up, looking for all the world like the brightly-coloured towers that I once, not so long ago, built out of blocks in our Hampstead garden.

  A thought occurs to me, all of a sudden: worlds are built out of books, just as buildings are built out of blocks... The daze deepens; my thoughts spin themselves into an ever-widening web, each filament glinting like a moonbeam shard. I see cities entirely constructed from books, from foundations to firmament – walls of tomes of green and blue and brown, some slim, some sturdy, but each forming an essential, immutable part of the fabric of the architecture... It’s an entrancing scene. And I realise that this is the feeling of IDEAS – of an idea coming upon me – and a wave of such dizzying, blissful excitement that the idea must, perforce, be a good one.

  ‘Miss Stamp,’ I say. ‘I’ve just realised something: a decision about my future. I want to become a writer.’

  ‘What an excellent idea,’ she responds, smiling at me with such approval that I feel like a spring bud, blossoming in the benevolent light of the sun. ‘Novels? Plays?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ I say. ‘Perhaps I shall not limit myself to any one form of writing.’

  ‘Well, our European expedition will no doubt furnish you with plenty of ideas,’ she says. ‘Who knows – perhaps you will turn out poetical after all?’

  Europe

  July 1826

  For the duration of the Channel crossing, Mamma and Miss Chaloner huddle together in the small, cramped cabin of the boat, groaning weakly and complaining about the smell. I myself am not troubled by seasickness, and am thus free to explore the deck with my governess. It’s raining – not a lot; just enough to fleck our faces with moisture – as we admire the hull, and the great funnel.