by Julia Gray
Dipping my pen afresh, I rewrite the line. I think about what he has said – my posture is too stiff, the pressure exerted on the page too great – but I don’t know what to change. I feel mildly insulted, although this is ridiculous, since it is his job to help me to improve; more than this, though, I am desperate to impress him. In an attempt to write at speed, I lose my grip on my pen on a down-stroke and score a jagged diagonal line down the page. I stop, rueful and dissatisfied.
‘Don’t give up,’ says Mr Hopkins. ‘Try again.’
‘It’s impossible. I can’t write any faster and make it appear in any way legible.’
Ah, but there’s the smile again, just when I am feeling almost tearful with frustration.
Mr Hopkins opens a leather-bound box and takes out a curious-looking object – it almost looks like an ornament of some kind, made from wire and – I think – ivory.
‘What is that?’ I say.
‘An “aidergraph”, or Hand Guide, as it’s generally known. It will help to hold your hand in place, while preventing unwanted flexion in your fingers.’
‘No,’ I say firmly.
‘It won’t hurt.’
‘Oh, very well,’ I say. He secures the aidergraph – it is like a sequence of interlocking ivory rings – and asks me to move my wrist, to extend each finger.
‘How does it feel?’ says Mr Hopkins.
‘I hate it,’ I say. ‘I don’t like to be bound by things.’
‘At least try the line again, before you take it off.’
He must be mad, I think, to imagine that this oddity will make a positive difference to my writing. But I want the lesson to continue, undisrupted by any refusal on my part to go along with his plans. And so, I dip once more, and roll my pen ever so slightly between my fingers before I lay the nib to the page, experimenting with my new range of motion. The aidergraph no longer presses quite so unpleasantly – perhaps the unpleasantness of it was inferred, rather than truly felt – and as I write the line for the third time, I find that the letters that form themselves are smoother, somehow, than they were before.
‘Good,’ says Mr Hopkins. ‘That’s very good.’
My hand is trembling – not from the exertion, but from the heavy-hot self-awareness that suffuses me. Can he tell? I wonder. Even when I was very young – five, six – and had to lie perfectly still upon the board in the nursery, feeling like dough beneath an angry rolling pin, the afternoon weighing down my bones... I never felt as awkward and uncomfortable as this. I must say something; I’ve been silent too long, and he will think that I am being rude. I look at him and say: ‘Will I make progress, Mr Hopkins?’
‘Oh, yes,’ says my tutor. His eyes are not brown, I realise now: they are greenish-brown, a cross between rain-soaked moss and tree bark. For good measure, he smiles a final time. ‘Certainly, Miss Byron, you will.’
Fordhook, Ealing
February 1833
It is our third lesson. I have made far more of an effort than I usually would to make sure that I am nicely dressed, hair brushed, face scrubbed. I sit in a kind of agony of anticipation, making mistakes on purpose in the hope that Mr Hopkins will lay his hand over mine in order to correct them. So far, he has not done so.
I am learning, he tells me, the Lewisian model of shorthand, pioneered by a Mr Lewis. ‘An interesting character,’ says Mr Hopkins. ‘He has a strong Cockney accent and a fondness for doggerel verses, but I am personally quite convinced that he is something of a genius. When I was studying for my final exams at university, I injured my hand quite gravely by writing too much in the wrong style. My brother had seen Mr Lewis give a lecture, and recommended that I seek his advice. Within weeks, he had corrected my posture, shown me how to wear the aidergraph, and had altered my handwriting so much that my own mother suspected my letters had been written by another. Really, Miss Byron, he saved me. That’s why I am so very passionate about teaching his method to as many young people as I can.’
For ten minutes or so, he tests me on my knowledge of the Stenographic Alphabet. I have been committed in my private study of these simple shapes and lines – so like a code, or secret language, that I find it quite enchanting – and he applauds me for my efforts. ‘Excellent, Miss Byron,’ he says. ‘I believe we are ready to begin the next chapter: The Beginnings of Long Words.’
‘I like long words,’ I say, with far more enthusiasm than I generally afford to my teachers.
‘As do I,’ says Mr Hopkins.
James Hopkins comes twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is lesson five, and my penmanship is now much improved; I no longer require the support of the aidergraph. Mr Hopkins, as usual, is all smiles; he tells me endless anecdotes involving his university days, and the things he learned; he asks me how I am with an expression of genuine interest and concern. But nothing else has happened and I am growing positively faint with frustration.
Invited to ‘write anything I like’ by my painstaking tutor, I think for a while and then decide on a line of Catullus’; I have been reading a good deal of poetry recently with my Latin tutor, who comes on Mondays: a lean, bespectacled man with streaks of grey in his hair, who clears his throat with compulsive regularity. The line is, I realise, a risky choice. I hope – I really do hope – that it will get some kind of reaction from Mr Hopkins, for I do not think that he will fail to infer its meaning.
Da mi basia mille, dein mille altera.
There: that is as big a hint as I can possibly give. What will he make of it? His eyes are downcast, focused; he is still scrutinising – or pretending to scrutinise – my writing.
‘Would you like me to translate the line?’ I say.
‘I know the translation. Give me a thousand kisses, then a thousand more. Isn’t that right?’
‘Just so,’ I say, still watching him.
‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘The formation of some of these consonants is very good.’
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘I don’t know if you have taken due care over this double “L”.’
‘Where?’ I say, knowing where – I felt it myself, that slight slip of the fingers as I wrote the conjoined letters; a double ‘L’ is written almost as a C-shape, and I did not do it justice. ‘Here?’ I point, disingenuously, to the wrong place in the line.
‘No, Ada.’ He laughs, moving his hand to mine. ‘Here.’
I laugh too, then stop. ‘Oh!’ I say. ‘You called me “Ada”.’
‘I apologise, Miss Byron. I should not have done that.’
‘But I liked it,’ I say.
We stare at each other. ‘I think... I believe that I did too,’ says James Hopkins.
He does not withdraw his hand. He is not quite close enough to kiss me, in his usual position just around the corner of the table, but he could move so easily, just by shifting his chair a couple of inches, and I lean my body towards him, imperceptibly, to make the prospect of so doing a simpler one. Yes: he could kiss me now, if he wanted to. Or: I could kiss him, abandoning convention altogether, embracing the kind of rare, rash action of which, perhaps, Lord Byron might have approved. A spatter of sparks from the fire brings me to my senses; of course Mr Hopkins will not kiss me now; he would not, could not do such a thing, not here, in the library, with a Fury on Duty somewhere not too far away. But even so, I can see that he is thinking about it; his lips part, perhaps without his even realising it, and his left hand drums a pattern on the table in what I am quite sure is an unconscious rhythm of desire. The room is so silent that the tick of the clock over the mantelpiece is suddenly heartbeat-loud.
And then the peace is shattered by Fury the Third, who comes bustling in to tell us that the lesson is almost over. James Hopkins moves his hand in an arrow-quick second, and by the time Fury the Third is upon us I am meekly reading aloud a marked passage from The Ready Writer.
It is a mercy, I think later, that t
he Furies know nothing of shorthand. If she had been able to read the line that I had written, the Fury would have been instantly alerted to my desires. As it is, she seems to have suspected nothing.
Mamma likes to visit the children at Ealing Grove as often as she can – two or three times a week, at the very least – and she is pleased, albeit mildly surprised, that I, almost as often, offer to go with her. I am particularly interested in the allotments. ‘I like your principle: education taking place outdoors, as well as in. Learning by doing,’ I tell her.
‘Quite so,’ says Mamma.
‘Besides, I might want to become a farmer one day,’ I add. Mamma ignores this.
Two young boys of perhaps twelve or thirteen are helping their teacher, a Mr Cross, to dig a drainage ditch. It’s hard work, and I wish that I could help them – it would be good for me to ask something more of my body than walking and reading, and besides, the young boys look as though they could do with assistance. Mamma ushers me on, to where a greenhouse is being constructed. She issues a volley of crisp questions at one of the gardeners; while they are engaged in conversation, I drift away to where some new fencing is being installed. In one corner, alongside the fence, sits a wooden shed. That too looks new. It seems that my mother has truly spared no expense.
A cry of pain startles me; I turn back to see that one of the boys has taken a tumble over his spade. I fly over to him in seconds, reaching him before Mr Cross does. Mamma is not far behind. I kneel down and help the boy up. ‘What is your name?’
‘Stephen, miss.’ I’m glad to see that he is warmly dressed; it’s bitterly cold at the moment, especially on these allotments, where there’s not much to block the wind.
‘Does it hurt when you move your foot, Stephen? Try to turn the ankle – gently, though.’
I support the boy’s weight as best I can while he moves his foot from side to side. ‘Does it hurt?’ I ask again.
‘No, miss. Not too badly.’
‘He’d better go indoors at once, and have it seen to,’ says Mamma. ‘I’ll go with him myself.’ She casts a dark look at the earth, as though disappointed in its failure to offer her students adequate support. ‘Ada, you stay here with Jack, and keep him company until Mr Cross and I return.’
They disappear, one on each side of the hapless Stephen (I suspect that he was in greater pain than he admitted), leaving me with the other boy, Jack. He seems unwilling to go on with his digging for the time being, and so I ask him instead about his studies, and whether he enjoys his life at the Academy. Jack, knowing perfectly well who I am, is politely enthusiastic.
‘How about the gardening work?’ I say, looking around. ‘It seems hard. Not to say dangerous.’
‘Oh, no,’ says Jack. ‘We enjoy the time outdoors, and whatever we produce is ours to sell. And it’ll be spring before long. Once the land is better prepared, we’ll be able to grow things, miss. Potatoes and parsnips. Mangel-wurzel.’
He is about to enter into a long disquisition on vegetables. Keen to avoid this if possible, I say: ‘And what of these new buildings?’
‘Well, miss, that, over there, is the greenhouse. And that’s the storage shed. Brand-new it is. Took a week of work for the carpenters and the pupils alike. It’s awfully nice inside, you know, with chairs and a table, and even a rug.’
‘I’d like to see it,’ I say, which is true: anything to get out of this cold wind. But I have other reasons, besides the cold and idle curiosity. Burning in my Ada-brain, which is always busy, like a needleworker’s hands, is the smallest seed of an idea.
Fordhook, Ealing
March 1833
Mary Montgomery is staying with us at present, and I am greatly relieved to have her companionship. Not a Fury, never a Fury, she has offered to take me out for the morning. We have come to the Strand to visit the National Gallery of Practical Science, more commonly known as the Adelaide, named after the Queen. The street is crowded: a man is selling bread from a cart, while a crowd of gawkers outside a shop window holds up our progress.
As we reach the gallery, I see a handwritten sign proclaiming: cooking with gas: a novel method by mr hicks. A tow-headed urchin with scabbed knees glowers at us from a doorway, and I remember what Mamma said about the separation between rich and poor. It jolts me – I suppose that I see the evidence of her words only when I am in the heart of London. When I am removed to the green pastures of Ealing, it’s easier to forget.
I’ve always been impressed by the fearless way that Mary forges through crowd-filled spaces, in spite of the fact that she finds it difficult to walk. With the aid of a slim walking stick, she is a determined figure in her voluminous walking-out dress; people stand back when she passes, making room for her.
The gallery comprises a central room, long and high-ceilinged, with a domed roof and an upper walkway, and smaller rooms sprouting from this middle atrium on both sides. The walls are a pretty pale colour, a cross between the sky and the sea – a fitting choice, I think, for a place devoted to curiosities of the imagination. A model canal – filled to the brim with water – divides the main room lengthways; little mechanical boats float upon it, serene as swans, and there are several people watching their progress intently. From the upper level come the thudding footfalls of visitors looking at the paintings.
We have a little time before the cooking demonstration begins, and so we wander about, not looking for anything in particular. A pocket thermometer in a glass case, a lithographic press, a number of curious fossils... then my eye is caught by a handsome, weighty-looking instrument, the likes of which I’ve never seen before, at the other end of the gallery. There is a man standing in front of it, in workmen’s overalls. In his hands he shuffles a deck of rectangular cards – they are rather larger than playing cards. He is, perhaps, making sure that they are in the correct order.
‘That is a Jacquard loom,’ says Mary, who has followed me. ‘It was designed by a Frenchman, Joseph Marie Jacquard, at the beginning of the century. Truly a unique invention, this.’
‘What does it do?’ I say. ‘Weaving?’
‘Silk-weaving, yes. Do you know how weaving is commonly done?’
‘The weft is woven over and under the warp,’ I say, ‘so that you have an interlacing pattern.’
‘That is quite correct. Now, this loom is able to do something rather more complicated. You’ve heard of the term “figured fabrics”?’ says Mary.
‘Those silks with pictures on them,’ I say.
‘Yes – very, very expensive fabrics they are too. They might feature sumptuous landscapes or fruit or flowers. There’s one hanging in the drawing room at Fordhook. It would take two weavers a day to weave perhaps an inch of silk, and no more. Slow work.’
‘Indeed,’ I say, enjoying the story. ‘So why is this loom different?’
‘See those cards there? With the holes in them? Those cards are punched in particular configurations that correspond to whatever pattern or picture is desired. They were Jacquard’s invention.’
We watch as the weaver feeds the cards into a mechanism at the top of the loom.
‘How do you get from the pattern to the punched holes?’ I ask him.
‘It’s done by the card maker,’ he says, ‘so I’m not rightly sure. As far as I’m aware, the pattern’s painted onto a grid. If a square on the grid is painted in, then he’d punch a hole in the card. If the square isn’t painted in, then there’d be no hole.’
I think about this for a while, and realise that I understand. The small round holes remind me, somehow, of musical notation – another system in which a pattern is represented by a series of identical circles, differentiated by their placement. It is beautiful – both simple and complicated at the same time. Now the mechanism draws down the series of cards – they are laced together – with a rattling sound. I am just wondering what will happen next when the weaver says: ‘Wherever there’s a hole, a p
in will pass through it, and a hook will raise a warp thread, if you understand my meaning.’
A kind of feverish excitement tingles at the back of my neck as I watch the shuttle travel up and down, industrious, precise, and the pattern – it is a fairly simple one, of different-coloured triangles – begins to appear.
Mary says: ‘How long, would you say, it takes you to weave a foot of fabric? On your own?’
Without looking up, the weaver says: ‘I could weave double that in a day, ma’am, with no trouble.’
Mary turns to me. ‘An incredible difference. Just think, Ada, of the possibilities! Any picture you could dream of, all reduced to a series of punched cards.’
I gaze at the loom with new admiration, my Ada-brain ticking over with this delicious information. Just think of the possibilities, said Mary. Yes: the possibilities. Any picture at all, produced not from a drawing, but from a series of holes in a particular configuration...
‘Come, Ada. The cooking demonstration is about to begin,’ Mary says.
I bid a wistful goodbye to the loom and follow her. We enter a small, circular exhibition space with a high ceiling, lamp-lit and absolutely packed with people. Most are women, but I can see a handful of men too, glossy in their black coats, laughing, looking around impatiently, waiting to be amused and enlightened.
‘Look,’ says Mary. ‘That’s Michael Faraday.’
‘Where? I can’t see—’
She ushers me in front of her, pointing subtly to a man in the centre of his group, and there he is: short – perhaps shorter than I am, with a mass of curly hair and coal-dark eyes. He looks to be about forty. Unlike the jostling, jocular crowd, he is silent, standing patiently in front of the exhibition stand. Michael Faraday is renowned for his work on electromagnetic induction. Mamma has always been especially fascinated by him; she’ll be delighted to hear that Mary and I have actually seen him in the flesh.