The Case of the Perilous Palace (The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency, Book 4)
Page 9
“Well, it was good of you to see them off.”
“Mmm,” said Ada. “I have a thing.”
“A thing?” Mary asked.
“Here,” said Ada, and handed Mary a large, hastily folded square of brown paper. Mary unfolded it, and there in the light of the street, she saw a drawing, or many sketches and notes for what looked like a statue, or a mechanical horse, with wings like the mythical Pegasus. It was intricate, and fantastical, and marvelous.
“It’s part of my flyology project. Anyway, I thought you’d…understand it.”
“I do, Ada, at least I think I do. Are you going to build it?”
“It would be useful, at least until I get my balloon back, once I sort out how, exactly.”
“Don’t you need these plans?”
“Oh, I’ll remember them,” said Ada confidently. “Anyway, I just…I wanted…”
“Thank you, Ada. It’s a lovely Christmas present.” Mary folded it up again, as the paper was becoming dappled by the snow.
Ada just nodded, and stepped back toward the waiting carriage.
“Happy Christmas, Ada!” shouted Mary as the carriage pulled away.
All Mary could see were Ada’s gloved fingers, pressed against the glass. But she understood all Ada meant with that gesture. And that was enough.
NOTES
The period between the end of the 1700s and the year Queen Victoria took the British throne is generally referred to as the Regency. If the Victorian era was a game that changed the shape of the world, the Regency was when all the pieces were placed on the board.
In 1826, the future queen Victoria (Princess Drina) was only seven years old. The world had seen a recent flurry of inventions: Volta’s electric battery (1800), Fulton’s submarine and torpedo (1800), Winsor’s patented gas lighting (1804), Trevithick’s steam locomotive (1804), Davy’s electric arc light (1809), Bell’s steam-powered boat (1812), and Sturgeon’s electromagnet (1824). It was an exciting time of technological advancement, and it brought forth two very bright girls who changed the world through their intellect and imagination.
The lives of women—and particularly girls—were extremely limited and under constant watch. Women were not allowed to vote or practice professions, and were widely thought to be less capable than men. A girl’s value to her family was in her reputation and her service, and she was expected to obediently accept a husband of her parents’ choosing. Any threat to that reputation—like behaving unusually—was often enough to ruin a family.
However, because girls were not expected to have a career and compete with their (or anybody’s) husband, upper-class girls were free to read or study as they wished, for few took them seriously. Because of this rare freedom, the nineteenth century saw a sharp surge in the intellectual contributions of female scientists and mathematicians, with Ada foremost among them.
AUGUSTA ADA BYRON (1815–1852) was a brilliant mathematician and the daughter of the poet Lord Byron (who died when Ada was eight). Largely abandoned by her mother, she was raised by servants (and sometimes her grandmother) at the Marylebone house and was very much cut off from the world as a child.
With her legendary temper and lack of social skills (a modern historian unkindly calls her “mad as a hatter”), Ada made few friends. Her mother insisted that young Ada have no connection to her father’s friends or even his interests, so Ada turned to mathematics. As a teenager, she worked with her friend Charles Babbage on the tables of numbers for Babbage’s “Analytical Engine”—a mechanical computer—which was not built in his lifetime. But Ada’s contribution to the work, as well as her idea that computers could be used not only for mathematics but also for creative works such as music, has caused many people to refer to Ada as “the world’s first computer programmer.” Babbage called her the Enchantress of Numbers. Her inventiveness was not limited to mathematics. Just as described in this book, she really did invent “flyology” as a field of study, wrote a book by that name, and drew the blueprints for a steam-powered flying horse.
Ada was married at nineteen to William King, a baron, who became the Count of Lovelace three years later. This is why Ada is more commonly known as Ada Lovelace. She had three children—Byron, Annabella, and Ralph—and died of cancer at the age of thirty-six. She continues to inspire scientists and mathematicians to this day, and many worthwhile projects are named after her.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN (1797–1851) was the daughter of the famous feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft (who died ten days after giving birth) and the political philosopher William Godwin. William Godwin married the publisher Mary Jane Clairmont in 1801, and Mary grew up in a mixed household of half siblings and stepsiblings in Somers Town, in northern London. She read broadly and had an appetite for adventure and romanticism. She ran away with Percy Shelley at age sixteen, and over one very famous weekend with Shelley, Lord Byron (Ada’s father), and early vampire novelist Dr. John Polidori, Mary came up with the idea for the world’s first science-fiction novel—Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus—which she wrote at age nineteen.
In real life, Mary was eighteen years older than Ada. But I thought it would be more fun this way—to cast these two luminaries as friends.
CLARA ALLEGRA (ALBA) BYRON (1817–1822) was the daughter of Claire Clairmont and Lord Byron. Her mother could not care for her, so she was left with her father. He, however, frequently left her in the care of strangers, eventually placing her in a convent in Italy. She died of fever at the age of five, but I have moved her timeline and brought her to life in the world of Wollstonecraft, to be a truer sister to Ada.
PERCY BYSSHE (rhymes with “fish”) SHELLEY (1792–1822) was an important poet and best friend to Ada’s father, Lord Byron. Percy came from a wealthy family, and he offered to support Mary’s father and the Godwin family. At age twenty-two, he ran off with then-sixteen-year-old Mary to Switzerland, and they were married two years later. He drowned at the age of twenty-nine when his sailboat sank in a storm.
While in reality, Peebs had died even before our story begins, I have extended his life so that they can be in this story together. It is Peebs, as Ada’s father’s friend and Mary’s future husband, who provides a real-life link between our two heroines.
CHARLES DICKENS (1812–1870) is considered one of the great writers of Victorian England. He really did work for the law firm of Ellis and Blackmore—though not because of a referral from Peebs! He loved books and was a keen observer of everyday life in London. He is perhaps best known to young readers as the author of A Christmas Carol.
CLARA (“CLAIRE”) MARY JANE CLAIRMONT (1798–1879) was known as Jane as a child but later adopted the name Claire. She really was Mary’s stepsister (her mother married Mary’s father), but her real life diverges dramatically from this story. Jane was actually Allegra’s mother! I adjusted her timeline and role so that the two sets of sisters—Ada and Allegra, Mary and Jane—could work together as friends and detectives.
PRINCESS ALEXANDRINA VICTORIA (QUEEN VICTORIA) (1819–1901) was queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and empress of India. As queen, she saw the map of the world change under her leadership and inspiration, giving shape to the modern era both politically and economically.
As a young girl and “heir presumptive,” she was raised apart from other children in a very controlled and lonely way, with her every mood or activity closely watched. Little details, such as her dolls, her drawings, her parrot, her dog, and even her insecurities, are all drawn from real life, though I have aged her a tiny bit for this story.
She was constantly manipulated by her mother, the Princess Victoria, and her mother’s adviser Lord Conroy, in hopes of securing a strong position for them both once Drina became queen. But their plan backfired—Drina only let Conroy remain in the palace on the condition that she never saw him or knew he was there.
JOHANNA CLARA LOUISE LEHZEN (1784�
�1870) was the German-born governess to Princess Drina and one of her few allies in the palace. While Drina’s mother and her adviser tried to keep Drina weak and ill-informed, Baroness Lehzen worked to shape the young princess into a strong and capable woman.
SIR JOHN PONSONBY CONROY (1786–1854) was an ambitious army officer who tried to control the young Drina’s household through manipulation and surveillance. He was unceasingly cruel to the princess and was nearly banished when she became queen.
This is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe written in 1841 and often considered the first detective story in English. I have borrowed its solution here for the book’s end—an orangutan up the chimney!
The Polygon was a fifteen-sided apartment building in Clarendon Square in Somers Town, in what was then the northern part of London (the city has long since grown around it). It was home to the Godwin family and, later, to Charles Dickens. Dickens wrote about the Polygon, making it the home of Harold Skimpole in the novel Bleak House. Scholars have speculated that the character of Skimpole may have been based on Mary’s father, William Godwin. While the building is long gone, the road that bears its name remains.
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