Enchantress of Numbers

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Byron drowned his troubles in brandy and distracted himself with his work at the Drury Lane Theatre—with work, and with particular members of the company. Annabella was eight months pregnant when Byron staggered home late one night thoroughly drunk, and when confronted by his wife’s indignant anger, he declared that he was sleeping with a bit player named Susan Boyce, and he intended to continue seeing her, and he might even bring her to Piccadilly Terrace to amuse him while Annabella was giving birth.

  For all her understanding that a wife should not notice deviation, Annabella was devastated, but there was little she could do. As her time approached, even the servants loyal to Byron closed ranks to protect their mistress. Fletcher, Byron’s longtime faithful valet, guarded his master’s door at night so that he would not stumble into his wife’s chamber in a drunken rage. Summoned from Annabella’s parents’ household, Mrs. Clermont settled into the room next to Annabella’s, watchful and protective. A nurse had been hired, but with no baby yet to care for, Mrs. Grimes took charge of the expectant mother instead, seeing to her every comfort and making sure she was never left alone.

  Annabella contemplated the impossible—leaving her husband and delivering her child at her parents’ new home. Upon the death of her brother, Lord Wentworth, Lady Judith had inherited an annual income of seven thousand pounds; the Wentworth family name, Noel; and the ancestral estate of Kirkby Mallory in Leicestershire, where Annabella thought to take refuge. But as he was her husband, Byron’s will was law, and she would have no rights to her child unless she proceeded with utmost caution.

  Women were permitted to leave their husbands in only a few circumstances—and there were even fewer conditions under which Annabella would be willing to leave Byron, whom despite everything she still loved, for whose salvation she tirelessly prayed. Byron’s secret crime, his unforgivable sin—was it sodomy? He had alluded to such behavior in his rare confidences about his school days and his travels in Turkey. Was it murder? Or something worse? What could possibly be worse?

  Annabella did not know, and she hardly dared imagine. What she did understand all too well was that if Byron’s cruelty resulted from mental derangement due to insanity, then he was ill and it was not his fault, and she must endure and forgive. If, however, his behavior sprang not from illness but from evil, then she had no choice but to flee with her child before they were irredeemably corrupted by his sin.

  Racing against time, Annabella studied medical journals and secretly consulted doctors. She had read a paper published in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal that attributed certain kinds of mental derangement to the final stages of hydrocephalus, water on the brain, signifying that death was imminent. She wrote to Dr. Matthew Baillie, a distinguished physician renowned for his study of the nervous system, and asked if he thought that ailment might explain her husband’s symptoms. Dr. Baillie was unwilling to diagnose Byron without examining him, but he advised her to leave her husband for her own safety until he could be thoroughly examined.

  Annabella dared not risk such irrevocable measures unless she was absolutely certain, but before she could gather enough evidence, nature intervened.

  On Saturday, 9 December, Annabella felt ill and fatigued all day, but when sergeant-at-law Samuel Heywood, a old friend of her parents, called, she roused herself to meet with him. She entrusted to him the secret of her medical investigation and asked him to share what she had learned with Lord and Lady Noel. “Do you think,” she ventured, “that I should join them at Kirkby Mallory before the birth of my child, or should I wait until I hold irrefutable proof?”

  They discussed the matter in hushed voices without reaching a conclusion, for she felt too nauseous and light-headed and uncomfortable to think clearly. Eventually Sergeant Heywood wished her well and reluctantly departed with only her message for her parents.

  Later that evening, she realized that she was in labor.

  She made her way downstairs to the drawing room, where Byron sat drinking brandy with Hobhouse, his favorite drinking companion. Studiously ignoring Hobhouse, she rested a hand on her abdomen and said to Byron, “I wanted to tell you that my time is imminent.”

  He did not leap up and send a servant for the doctor. He did not ask how she felt and escort her upstairs to bed. Instead he fixed her with a baleful look and said, almost casually, “After the child is born, do you want to continue living here with me or not?”

  He must have overheard her speaking to Sergeant Heywood, for the servants would not have betrayed her. A contraction seized her; she grasped the back of the nearest armchair for support. “Did you not hear me?” she asked, voice strained, tears filling her eyes. “Your child is coming.”

  Hobhouse had the decency to look concerned, but Byron merely rose and poured himself another drink. With a sob, Annabella fled the room as quickly as she could and started carefully up the steep staircase. Mrs. Clermont must have heard her cry out, for she hurried to meet her and assisted her to her room. Soon thereafter, the front door slammed, and she knew that Byron had left for the theatre.

  Her labor was long and slow in building. Dr. Le Mann arrived at eleven o’clock, examined her, and advised her to rest as much as she could, while she could. She dozed intermittently, awakened by contractions that steadily increased in frequency and strength. Hours passed, and she knew Byron had returned home when her cries of pain were answered by loud thumps and crashes coming from the floor beneath her bed—her husband, flinging bottles of soda against the ceiling of the room two flights below. He had done so on other occasions to warn her to be quiet while he worked. She doubted he was writing now. In his inscrutable malice, he only wanted to disturb her rest.

  On the morning of Sunday, 10 December 1815, Annabella gave birth to a healthy baby girl with a strong chin and dark hair like her father’s. Exhausted and weeping and longing for her mother, Annabella prayed those would prove to be the only characteristics her daughter inherited from him.

  It was not until the following morning that Byron appeared at her door. “The child was born dead, wasn’t it?” he asked, his face ashen.

  “She’s very much alive,” said Annabella, incredulous. How could he not know?

  As she gingerly sat up in bed, Mrs. Grimes entered the room carrying their daughter, swaddled in a soft blanket and apparently sleeping. “Let me have a good look at her,” Byron said. After a wary glance to Annabella, and her answering nod, the nurse placed the baby in his arms. “Such a pretty child,” he exclaimed softly, rocking slightly back and forth. He glanced up at Annabella, grinning. “You know, if she resembles my sister, it’s probably because she was conceived at Six Mile Bottom.”

  Annabella doubted that would have anything to do with it, but she was too tired to argue. “Perhaps.”

  Byron’s gaze returned to his daughter. “Oh, what an implement of torture I have acquired in you,” he cheerfully told her, in the high, singsong voice reserved for speaking to young children.

  Annabella’s heart sank. She could easily guess whom he meant to torture.

  Byron glanced up again, his eyes bright with inspiration. “We should name her Augusta, after my sister.”

  “I would prefer Judith, after my mother.”

  “Absolutely not. I despise that old bird.” He bent his head to kiss the baby’s smooth brow. “Augusta it shall be.”

  Annabella resigned herself to it. Perhaps the beloved name would encourage Byron to adore his daughter as much as he loved his sister.

  In the days that followed, Byron plucked a middle name from some high branch of his family tree last used during the reign of King John, and the child was christened Augusta Ada. In a simple act of defiance and possession, Annabella always slightly emphasized the second of the two names, as if “Augusta” were merely an honorific—a synonym for “Miss,” perhaps.

  Out of concern for her health, Dr. Le Mann confined Annabella to her room for two weeks followin
g the birth. After that respite, Hobhouse was among the first visitors who called to pay his respects. Watching him as he admired little Augusta Ada, Annabella was reminded of her suspicions that Byron and Hobhouse were implicated in some terrible crime, and that perhaps guilt rather than illness provoked her husband’s violent outbursts.

  Although she had hoped that the presence of a child in the household would mitigate Byron’s dreadful tempers, the fact that he was now a father affected him not at all. He still drank heavily and stayed out until all hours. He still consorted with his actress, and he boasted of his trysts to Annabella, indifferent to the misery he inflicted.

  Once more she secretly consulted doctors and studied medical texts, desperately hoping to find some physical cause for his madness, a diagnosis that would lead her to a remedy. As a last resort, in his absence she stole into his bedchamber to search his papers and belongings for something, anything, that would enlighten her. The most telling items she discovered were a vial of laudanum and an edition of the Marquis de Sade’s Justine. She had not read the novel, but the marquis’s reputation for obscenity was known everywhere.

  One night in early January Byron woke her with a kiss, sat down on the edge of her bed, and with brandy heavy on his breath, told her that he intended to live exactly as he pleased, not only with the actress but in every other way a man could live. Almost as an afterthought, he reminded her that a wife had no legal right to object to her husband’s behavior unless he beat her or confined her, neither of which he intended to do.

  “Then it is not illness but evil that compels you,” said Annabella, resigned.

  Byron shrugged and looked almost gleeful. “I certainly don’t feel ill.”

  He gave her a merry peck on the cheek, rose, and left her to mourn him—for it did almost feel as if he had died. The good man she thought she had married certainly was no more.

  Byron had willfully chosen the path to damnation and was striding cheerfully down it, away from her, away from Ada.

  She had no choice but to heed Dr. Baillie’s advice and leave him.

  • • •

  That decision brings her to his chamber door on the evening of 14 January 1816, while Byron and Augusta laugh merrily within and Ada slumbers peacefully in her cradle upstairs. If Annabella delays any longer, she will only prolong her misery.

  She knocks on the door and opens it before they respond, assuming that they will ignore her. They sit so closely on the sofa that Byron’s left leg pins Augusta’s dress to the cushions. Byron smiles at his wife lazily, Augusta more brightly. “Annabella,” she cries, trying to rise but finding herself held fast, giggling when she discovers why she cannot stand. “I’m so sorry. Did we wake you?”

  “No, little Ada did.” She crosses the room and stands before them, hands folded at her waist, perfectly serene.

  “Augusta Ada, my precious child,” says Byron, sipping his brandy. “As lovely as her namesake.”

  His sister blushes, flattered, but she gives him a playful shove. “A good husband would say, ‘As lovely as her mother.’”

  “I never claimed to be a good husband.”

  “Perhaps not, but you should aspire to it.”

  Annabella cannot endure another word of their silly banter. “I’m leaving for Kirkby Mallory in the morning, and I shall take Ada with me.”

  “Lord and Lady Noel will be thrilled to meet their granddaughter,” says Augusta, “but are you sure you’re up to the journey so soon?”

  “I’m perfectly recovered, thank you.” Annabella does not disabuse her of the notion that she only intends to visit. “I wanted to bid you both good night, and farewell.”

  Augusta looks as if she wants to rise and embrace her, but she does not ask her brother to free her gown. “Good night and safe travels.”

  From Byron’s appraising look, Annabella suspects he understands her intentions. “When shall we three meet again?” he asks, and from his intonation she knows he quotes from Macbeth, posing the First Witch’s question to her sisters gathered around the cauldron.

  In thunder, lightning, or in rain? Annabella thinks, remembering those precious happy hours at Halnaby when they discussed literature and poetry. Her heart aches, but she manages to keep her voice from trembling when she replies, “In heaven, I hope.”

  Augusta’s smile falters. Annabella swiftly turns before they see her tears gathering and hurries back to her room. Summoning the servants, she puts them to work packing trunks and cases for her and the baby, and she instructs Mrs. Grimes to prepare to accompany them. Neither Byron nor Augusta comes after her and attempts to persuade her to stay—as far as she knows, they will remain exactly where she left them throughout the night. Augusta definitely does not emerge from her brother’s chamber before Annabella finishes packing and has the footmen take her luggage downstairs so it may be loaded onto the carriage at first light.

  She checks on the baby one last time and silently weeps over her for a moment, but then she dries her tears and retires to her own bed. Exhausted by deep sorrow, she falls asleep as soon as her head touches the pillow, but she wakes just before dawn feeling no better rested than when she lay down.

  In the thin light of the gray midwinter morning, she rises, washes, and puts on her warmest dress. Next she quietly steals to the nursery, where she finds Mrs. Grimes changing Ada, her own satchel packed and waiting by the door. Annabella bundles her daughter warmly against the cold and carries her downstairs, the nurse following close behind. Annabella quakes at the sound of their footfalls, for it is impossible to be perfectly silent even with the greatest care.

  They pass Byron’s chamber door, and Annabella hesitates. She holds her breath and strains her ears, wondering if she will hear Byron lamenting their departure, Augusta soothing him, but all is silent within. Her gaze falls upon the rug outside the door, preserved in memory of Byron’s favorite Newfoundland, Boatswain, who had often slept upon it. For a moment she is tempted to hand the baby to Mrs. Grimes, fling herself upon the carpet, and wait there until he wakes and opens the door—but what then? If she begs him for mercy, for reconciliation, for fidelity, he will glare at her, full of contempt, and vehemently refuse.

  She turns away and passes on to the foyer, where Mrs. Clermont gives the nurse a hamper of food she has packed for their journey. As Annabella and Mrs. Grimes put on their warmest wraps, a footman appears and in a voice barely above a whisper announces that the carriage is loaded, the driver and team ready to depart.

  “Good-bye, my dear,” Mrs. Clermont says to Annabella, a tear glimmering in her eye. “Be safe. Be well.”

  “Look after him,” Annabella beseeches her, in spite of herself, in spite of everything.

  Mrs. Clermont sniffs and throws a look of disdain over her shoulder. “As you wish—as far as he will allow it.”

  Annabella thanks her with a nod. She carries her daughter outside to the carriage, which quickly speeds its three passengers off to Kirkby Mallory, where they will find sanctuary and love. Annabella and Byron will never meet again, nor will Byron ever again see his daughter.

  I know this because I was there, a small, innocent witness to the last days of my parents’ shared lives. I know this because although today the world knows me best as Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace, mathematician and scientist, I was once a tiny child whisked away at dawn from my first home by a mother desperate to save us from my father’s corruption and sin.

  I was there, and I will tell you all that followed after.

  Chapter One

  Sole Daughter of My House and Heart

  January–April 1816

  You may well wonder how I, no more than seven weeks old when my mother left my father and launched the great scandal that came to be known throughout England as the Separation, can claim to have witnessed the tumultuous events that provoked so much curiosity and gossip. It is a fair question, since some of the incidents I have de
scribed occurred before my birth. Certainly, I have always possessed uncanny powers of perception, understanding, and synthesis, but not even I can see beyond the frame that encloses my own life.

  Obviously I have no firsthand experience of the years that preceded my birth, and I will not pretend to remember the contentious events of my infancy. Instead this account of my parents’ courtship, marriage, and separation and my own earliest years is comprised of facts I learned later: tantalizing details revealed by my mother, Lady Byron; glimpses of unattended papers not meant for my eyes; servants’ gossip overheard in the corridors of my grandparents’ palatial home of Kirkby Mallory; and detailed accounts Lady Byron painstakingly composed for her lawyers.

  There were an exhausting number of the latter.

  You may say I have borrowed other people’s memories, and I will not deny it. I will see your challenge and raise you one confession: Sometimes it is difficult for me to distinguish between memories that are truly my own and stories that were inculcated by Lady Byron, her parents, and her friends, who perpetually hovered around me like a swarm of judgmental wasps.

  Can you honestly say that you are any more certain of the origin of your own memories?

  Though you may question their provenance, these are my memories, recorded here for posterity. And why should I not write my life? My father did so, although as far as I know, the only manuscript of his carefully crafted memoir was destroyed at my mother’s command. Not that I claim my life merits memorializing as his did. Indeed, at this moment, my pride has been so battered that I believe the list of those who might wish to read my memoirs will be very short indeed. Perhaps admirers of my Great Work would be interested in learning about my life and education. Someday my children, if they are in a forgiving mood, might be curious about my youth and my consuming passions. They have shown little interest thus far, but someday, when they are much older and have learned firsthand that loving one’s children does not guarantee that one will never fail them, they may want to know me better.