Enchantress of Numbers

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  I confess to a stirring of superstitious fear that I tempt Fate by setting down this memoir now, as if the story of my life is nearing its conclusion. I am but thirty-five; surely I have years left to fill with accomplishments and reflection. My health has not been particularly worse than usual, and yet something compels me to take pen in hand now rather than wait until I am white-haired and wizened. In recent months, I have been plagued by disturbing suspicions that I may draw my last breath sooner than my doctors will admit—but the future is even less certain than the past, so I will say nothing more of that here.

  Instead I will return to my story, for it is unkind to leave my heroine and her child suspended in peril so long.

  After my mother spirited me from my father’s home at 13 Piccadilly Terrace on that cold winter morning, we stopped to change horses in Woborn and continued on to Leicestershire, arriving at Kirkby Mallory quite late at night. The servants, who had never met us, were perhaps confused by the late hour or by Lady Byron’s exhaustion, for they led her to the kitchen rather than the drawing room, as would have befit her rank. Before long the mistake was corrected, Lord and Lady Noel were awakened, and there was, I imagine, a tearful reunion in the drawing room. My grandparents were shocked, no doubt, by their lovely daughter’s gaunt frame and haggard features. Knowing my grandmother as I later would, I’m sure she wept at first, then dried her eyes, strengthened her resolve, and began planning how to restore her precious daughter to health—and how to punish her wicked son-in-law.

  Until then, Lady Byron had been able to conceal the worst of her sufferings from her parents, but once she moved us into their home, the truth in all its horror came out. They were devastated, outraged, and filled with righteous indignation, and since strangling my father was out of the question, Lady Noel promptly contacted her lawyer. Even as my mother continued her correspondence with doctors and arranged from afar for my father to have a complete medical examination, my grandparents were consulting with Colonel Francis Doyle, a lawyer renowned as a mediator in marital affairs, to arrange for a legal separation, if Byron could be persuaded to consent to it.

  But of course, I knew nothing of this. I knew only that the unpleasant scenes of shouting and weeping that had played in the background of my earliest days had faded, replaced by gentle laughter and tender endearments. I discovered that my mother’s milk was sweeter, richer, and more abundant than ever, and as she regained her strength, I, too, flourished. Every day I sensed that I was warm and safe and loved.

  As the months passed, I was happily ignorant of all that went on behind the scenes, of the meetings with lawyers, of the exhaustive measures taken to reach a just settlement and to keep the conflict out of the courts. I could not have understood that I had become a point of contention in the negotiations, as my mother wanted sole custody of me and my father refused to give up his rights.

  As my mother traveled to and from London to meet with her legal advisors, or to various spas seeking remedies for her persistent illnesses, Colonel Doyle wrote to my grandparents warning them that Byron or his agents might attempt to abduct me. “It is of the utmost importance that Lord and Lady Noel never lose possession of their grandchild,” he emphasized. “You must guard the infant with every possible vigilance.”

  Alarmed, Lady Noel purchased two pistols for defense and informed the groundskeepers that they would serve as my guards, patrolling the estate as they went about their usual duties and keeping a sharp watch for intruders. Her orders sent a thrill of excitement through the household staff, for nothing added interest to the tedious duty of looking after an elderly lord and lady than the threat of a kidnapping.

  I have said that I have no memory of these events, and yet, perhaps an impression of my circumstances was etched upon my mind. When I was a very young child, I often felt a faint, persistent dread, as if I were being watched by a malicious intelligence. When I was a bit older, walking and talking and questioning everything, I was vaguely certain that at any moment, my wicked father might burst into Kirkby Mallory, snatch me up in a rough embrace, and spirit me off to parts unknown, far from everything I knew and everyone I loved. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I understand that although my father wanted to see me, he had no intention of burdening himself with a small child and making himself an outlaw in the process. Yet the whispers that he might do so and the preparations to stop him surely left their mark upon my fertile imagination.

  Despite their best attempts, my mother and grandparents could not keep the scandal out of the press, especially after my father published two poems about the Separation, “Fare Thee Well” and “A Sketch from Private Life.” He published them privately, intending to circulate them only among his most intimate friends, but the printer leaked a copy to a newspaper editor, and one morning my mother was shocked to discover them featured prominently in the paper beneath the headline “Lord Byron’s Poems on His Own Domestic Circumstances.”

  You may recall that soon after my birth my father declared me “an instrument of torture,” and in this he proved prescient, for he wielded me against my mother to win sympathy for himself. “Fare Thee Well” offered the sort of romantic overtures that never failed to make the ladies swoon, for although my father lamented his estrangement from my mother, he reminded her and all the world of their eternal bond, which would endure beyond all suffering. I made my poetic debut in the ninth stanza when he appealed to my mother to reconcile for my sake:

  And when thou would solace gather,

  When our child’s first accents flow,

  Wilt thou teach her to say ‘Father!’

  Though his care she must forgo?

  Any sympathy he might have won from the public with those tender lines was likely ruined by the second poem. In nasty, satirical strokes, “A Sketch from Private Life” unkindly skewered Mrs. Clermont, my mother’s erstwhile governess and longtime faithful servant, and blamed her for turning my mother against him. The poem was brilliantly wicked, but it was an unwarranted attack on a woman utterly unable to defend herself, and a gentleman simply did not treat a loyal member of his household that way. He called her the “hag of hatred,” for heaven’s sake. The poem also included an unflattering portrait of my mother as a pure, pious, unfeeling, unforgiving, heartless machine—a figment, I regret to say, that made an impression on the public that lingers to this day, despite her many accomplishments and charitable endeavors in all the years since.

  Even so, the publication of the poems ultimately served Lady Byron well, for they portrayed my father as vicious and hypocritical, deserving of the strong condemnation that soon bombarded him. The press vilified him, and as the scandal grew and increased its frenzy, he received the worst punishment London society could inflict upon a man: the cut direct.

  The cut took place in early April at the home of Sarah Villiers, Countess of Jersey, one of the few women of fashion who sympathized with Byron in his ordeal. Perhaps because her own illicit affairs—appropriately discreet and tolerated by her husband—were numerous, she had invited her besieged friend to attend her ball, a daring act of kindness and loyalty. Lady Jersey could not compel her guests to embrace him, however, and when my father entered the ball with my aunt Augusta on his arm, they were met with cold glares and hostile silence. Gentlemen whom Byron knew well met his greetings with wordless, stony looks before deliberately turning their backs; ladies who had once simpered and swooned held his gaze for a moment to acknowledge they had seen him, then turned their heads and pretended not to know him; well-matched couples left the room when the siblings entered, as if Byron’s marital discord were contagious. Even Lady Jersey, who treated Byron with the utmost courtesy up to the moment his sister’s distress compelled him to escort her home from the ball early, later called on my mother to assure her that my father’s presence at the gathering had been “most unexpected.”

  Then, as now, the cut direct was an established social custom with specific rules of etiquet
te and one unmistakable purpose: It announced that all ties of friendship between the parties had been irrevocably severed. Lord Byron was no longer welcome in London society.

  Ten days after his public humiliation, my father, who thus far had adamantly resisted my mother’s appeals for a legal separation, finally acquiesced. He did not relinquish his paternal rights, but he insisted upon, and was granted, a stipulation that my mother could not take me abroad out of fear that we would settle in a foreign land where absent fathers had no legal rights whatsoever. He wrote to Augusta to ask her to serve as an intermediary between him and his estranged wife, watching out for me and writing to him often about my health and looks and habits, but never to mention my mother’s name to him or to allude to her “in any shape—or on any occasion—except indispensable business.” He then composed one last letter to my mother, entreating her to be kind to his sister and to permit her to visit me, and he enclosed a small emerald ring, a family heirloom, which he begged her to give to me. She complied, but not until many years later, when I was of an age to be safely entrusted with it. The ring became one of my most treasured possessions, and I intend to pass it on to my own daughter upon my death.

  With the bitter legal squabbling of the Separation complete, my father decided to go abroad, but although he was hounded by creditors and ostracized from society, he was determined to leave England with a grand, defiant flourish that his enemies would never forget. He ordered an extravagant new carriage fashioned after one belonging to Napoléon Bonaparte, who the year before had escaped exile on the island of Elba and had been welcomed by cheering crowds in Paris only to face defeat three months later at the Battle of Waterloo. I suppose if one must go into exile like a deposed emperor, once might as well depart in imperial style. What parallels, if any, my father wanted observers to draw between his own downfall and that of the erstwhile French emperor, we can only imagine.

  Into that spectacular carriage Byron loaded his beloved Newfoundlands, his pet peacock, his personal physician, his friends Hobhouse and Scrope Davies, and what clothing and possessions he had managed to fling into trunks before the avaricious bailiffs and creditors descended upon 13 Piccadilly Terrace. Early in the morning on 23 April, he and his companions set out for Dover, where the carriage was immediately loaded onto the ship out of fear that the bailiffs might attempt to seize it too.

  Capricious winds and foul weather kept my father on British soil for another two days, but on 25 April, he bade Hobhouse farewell at the pier, boarded the ship, and set sail for Ostend, Belgium, a seventy-five-mile crossing that ordinarily took about eight hours. Instead the rough seas made it a horrible, stomach-churning, sixteen-hour ordeal, but my father distracted himself from the wretched conditions and bouts of seasickness by working on the third canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. I know I was in his thoughts then, and that he grieved to part from me, for he preserved his thoughts in timeless verses, perhaps hoping that someday I would read them.

  Is thy face like thy mother’s, my fair child!

  ADA! sole daughter of my house and heart?

  When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,

  And then we parted,—not as now we part,

  But with a hope.—

  Awaking with a start,

  The waters heave around me; and on high

  The winds lift up their voices: I depart,

  Whither I know not; but the hour’s gone by,

  When Albion’s lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye.

  My father never returned to England.

  Chapter Two

  I Know That Thou Wilt Love Me

  April–December 1816

  As fiercely as my mother had fought for custody, it may surprise you to learn that after we fled London, she spent very little time with me at Kirkby Mallory Hall. There were legal matters she was obliged to attend to in the city, of course, but much of her time was spent visiting friends or resting at favorite spas. My mother has complained of fragile health for as long as I can remember, her worst symptoms never failing to appear at the least opportune moments—when an unpleasant duty required her attention, for example, or when I fell ill and badly wanted her to care for me. This remarkable and unfortunate coincidence has persisted throughout my life.

  Fortunately, my beloved grandparents and devoted nurse Mrs. Grimes looked after me so well that I hardly noticed my mother’s absence. Indeed, whenever she breezed through Leicestershire on a visit, I did not recognize her, and when she swept into the nursery and tried to pick me up, I shrieked and wailed and reached desperately for Grandmama or Mrs. Grimes. The first time I behaved so thoughtlessly, Lady Byron laughed and said, “She is angry that I’ve weaned her, and she wants to punish me.” The second time, however, she became very much displeased, and before she set off on her next trip, she ordered my nurse to have me kiss her portrait every night before I went to bed so I would better remember her. The dutiful Mrs. Grimes obliged, but I reached four months of age, and then five, without learning any better.

  Then it happened that my mother’s visit home coincided with an exhausting few days when I was teething, and I frequently disturbed the restful peace of Kirkby Mallory with my wails of pain. Resolving to speed the process along, my mother sliced my inflamed gums with a lancet, so briskly and unsentimentally that Mrs. Grimes flinched.

  “I don’t disagree with your theory, my dear,” my grandmother said over my screams, lifting me from my cradle as Mrs. Grimes hurried off for a wet cloth for me to gnaw on to staunch the bleeding, “but perhaps this would be better done by a surgeon or apothecary. A particular dexterity is required, I think.”

  “Nonsense. She’ll be fine in a moment.” My mother reached for me, but when I shrieked and hid my face on my grandmother’s shoulder, she let her hands fall to her sides. “She would thank me, if she understood.”

  Regrettably, I did not understand, and for a time after she went away again I refused to kiss her portrait unless my grandparents became quite stern with me, for I associated the woman in the picture with the lancet cutting open my tender gums.

  Although my mother was often obliged to be away from me due to her health, you mustn’t think that she lacked affection for me. Despite the distractions of whatever seaside resort or gracious country house she inhabited, she always found time to send my grandparents sweetly anxious letters inquiring about my health, growth, and comfort. She even took the extra time to include a cover note instructing my grandmother to save her letters in case she was ever required to submit evidence of her maternal devotion to the courts. I like to think, however, that my mother really wanted them kept for me, as a sort of diary that I would enjoy someday when I was old enough to read them on my own.

  When I was a trifle older and had become a more agreeable companion, my mother occasionally allowed me to accompany her on her travels, with my nurse and my mother’s maid completing our little entourage. Although you may protest that at six months of age I would have been too young to recall it, my earliest memory is of one of our trips together in early June of 1816. My mother had taken me to Ely, in Cambridgeshire, to tour the magnificent cathedral there. The dean’s wife herself showed us from the Galilee Porch inside to the West Tower, and oh, how my young eyes widened as I marveled at the glorious Octagon, with its vast stone tower, eight high archways, and glazed timber lantern suspended high above. Our tour moved on to the beautiful, light, airy Lady Chapel, where we admired the multiple bays of tall, traceried windows and marble pillars; the graceful ogees and seating booths of the arcade; and even the intriguing evidence of damage carried out during the Reformation, when faces and other images were hacked out of the relief carvings along the walls, which provoked my curiosity about the people who had been depicted in the once finely detailed scenes. Even the luxuries of Kirkby Mallory Hall had not prepared me for such splendor.

  It was when we were returning to the cathedral proper, passing along the co
vered walkway from the Lady Chapel to the north aisle of the chancel, that I first became aware of the bold, curious stares of other visitors. Unnoticed until then, clusters of onlookers had gathered not far from us, murmuring excitedly as they watched, some nodding toward us, others impertinently pointing. My mother had been recognized, and it was easy to guess the identity of the infant she carried. I heard my name spoken here and there in unfamiliar voices; intrigued, I turned my head this way and that, trying to discover who had spoken of me with such excitement. My interest turned to alarm as the crowd closed in on us from both ends of the walkway—curious, no doubt, to see whether the offspring of the notorious Byron had sprouted horns and a tail. My mother murmured urgently to the dean’s wife, who quickly ushered us past the onlookers down a side corridor to solitude and safety.

  My mother was too disconcerted to wait until the gawkers dispersed, so we cut short our visit and left the cathedral. We spent the night at a nearby inn, and in the morning when we rose and went down to breakfast, the innkeeper showed us to a private dining room. Before we could be seated, he wrung his hands and said, “I’m terribly sorry, Lady Byron, but I thought it best you know that your carriage has attracted quite a crowd in front of the inn.”

  My mother grew very still for a moment, but then she went to a window, drew back the curtain, and looked outside. A dozen or more men and women surrounded our carriage at a respectful distance, noting the coat of arms painted on the door, rising on tiptoe to peer through the windows, drawing back in disappointment when they spied no passengers within.