Enchantress of Numbers

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  With her own words and deeds, she had finally freed me of the tether of mythical veneration of either of my parents. I had built my own wings, and with them I would soar to the stars.

  Epilogue

  Hopes Which Will Not Deceive

  September–December 1850

  I had defied my mother by standing fast for what I believed to be true—and I had lived to tell the tale. In the weeks that followed, my mother fired back a few more angry, self-righteous letters, I responded with sincere concern and love, and eventually she yielded. That is not to say that she admitted wrongdoing or apologized, but she ceased condemning me, and she did not abandon her grandchildren.

  That was victory enough for me.

  In hindsight, I realized that my rebellion had begun long ago—not in my childhood defiance of rules and restrictions, but in my embrace of the imagination, my gradual rejection of the notion that I must suppress it, deny it, if I hoped to escape a fatal descent into madness. All along it had been the vain struggle to purge myself of imagination that had almost destroyed me, not my bad Byron blood, not some inherent wickedness.

  I think that all my life, in small ways and great, I had tried to bring together the intellect and the imagination, sensing that they were not two separate faculties, but two halves of the same genius. Both intellect and imagination had inspirited my childhood pursuit of Flyology, and both had been essential to my understanding of the Analytical Engine as I wrote my Notes. After the ill-fated publication of the Memoir, as I struggled to find a new vocation, to devote myself to another Great Work, I had argued with my mother about the imprudence—in fact, the impossibility—of renouncing the imagination entirely and forever. “You will not concede me philosophical poetry,” I had written to her angrily after she had tried to discourage me from studying music, poetry, and philosophy. “Invert the order! Will you give me poetical philosophy, poetical science?”

  Poetical science, I resolved, would be my new vocation, and I was filled with excitement and anticipation as I awaited the discovery of where this would lead me in the years to come.

  With fortuitous timing that seemed to me evidence that I was embarking upon the right path, another celebration of a great and glorious future of science and wonder was coming to London. This Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, opening in May, was meant to demonstrate to the entire world Great Britain’s role at the forefront of industrial accomplishment and innovation. It would present to an eager audience, expected to run into the millions over the course of its six months, the greatest discoveries and artifacts of industry and culture. The Great Exhibition promised to be a magnificent display of technology, art, science, and commerce, honoring the achievements of the past while offering thrilling glimpses of our hopes and aspirations for the future.

  Mr. Babbage had been eager to participate in the management of what was certain to be a glorious event, but his ongoing disputes with certain powerful men in government had led to his exclusion from the organizing committee. He was bitterly disappointed, but he found some consolation in writing a book about the Great Exhibition, which, as he pointed out, would continue to intrigue and inform readers long after the exhibition closed in October 1851.

  As a part of his research, he interviewed many potential exhibitors, including William, who intended to display the innovative process he had developed for brickmaking. Mr. Babbage also studied plans for the various construction projects under way on the exhibition grounds in Hyde Park, especially the Crystal Palace, an enormous structure of glass and cast iron that already was being touted as an architectural marvel even though it was only partially completed.

  In late December, Mr. Babbage invited me to accompany him on a tour of the construction site with Sir James South, a mutual friend and member of the organizing committee. “Be sure to wear thick stockings and sturdy shoes,” Mr. Babbage instructed. “There are many potential hazards underfoot, and delicate lady’s slippers are no match for them.”

  I immediately accepted the invitation, although I was quite unwell and had been for several weeks. My complaints were vague and various, but the most persistent were abdominal pains—sometimes sharp, sometimes a dull ache—and bleeding when I was not expecting my menses. Laudanum offered me some relief from the pains, but as always, it did nothing to cure whatever caused them. When the glow of the drops faded, the torment returned, sometimes more intensely than before. Dr. Locock was baffled; he and William suggested that perhaps it was all in my head. I knew they were wrong, but how did one prove that one felt pain?

  But on that December day, my interest in the Great Exhibition compelled me to ignore my discomfort and ride out to Hyde Park with Mr. Babbage. I bundled up in my warmest dress and heaviest wool coat and hood to ward off the cold, and fortunately the winds were calm, the sun pale but valiant, and only a few flakes of snow drifted lazily down upon us when we arrived at the construction site. It fairly swarmed with workers carrying all manner of tools and iron pieces back and forth. Mr. Babbage promptly spotted Sir James South in the crowd and offered me his arm, and together we carefully made our way to his side.

  It was a fascinating tour, and as our courteous guide showed us around and described the enormous palace of glass that would emerge from the present chaos, a veritable cathedral to science and industry rising in the heart of London, I could imagine it sparkling like a jewel, casting beams of enlightenment that would reflect around the world. In this chamber would be the display of scientific instruments—microscopes, barometers, the telegraph, and every other imaginable device. Here would be a demonstration of steelmaking, and there a reaping machine sent all the way from the United States. And there, given pride of place, would be the Jacquard loom, which offered not only beautifully woven fabric, but inspiration as well.

  From time to time I caught Mr. Babbage’s eye, and from his rueful half smile, I could tell that he was thinking, as I was, that the most astonishing invention of our age would not be celebrated here, for it was back in Marylebone in Mr. Babbage’s workshop, represented by thousands of pages of notes and drawings, and one all too quickly forgotten Memoir.

  It was profoundly unfair that Mr. Babbage would not be represented at an exhibition meant to celebrate the very best of industrial achievement and innovation.

  At the end of the tour, Sir James South bade us farewell, and Mr. Babbage and I walked the long way around the construction site to take one last look at the busy scene before we returned to the carriage. “It seems to me that in such a vast space, they ought to be able to find room to display the demonstration model of your Difference Engine,” I told Mr. Babbage as he assisted me aboard.

  Shaking his head, he climbed in after me and seated himself. “There’s room enough for the entire Analytical Engine, if they cared enough to show it. Of course, that would require them to care enough to have it built.”

  “If they only knew what it was and what it could do,” I said, impassioned, “if they truly understood, they would spare no expense.”

  “The men who pay the bills don’t understand, and the men who understand don’t have the resources,” said Mr. Babbage. “I’m beginning to agree with our dear friend Mrs. Somerville, that perhaps the world is not ready for my engines.”

  I reached out to him, took his hand, and squeezed it. “One day it shall be,” I told him emphatically. “Your engine shall be built, and all of our disappointment will be nothing but a fleeting memory.”

  He nodded and thanked me, and in an undertone that I was not sure I was meant to hear, he added that he sincerely hoped I was right.

  I was sure that I was. I had to be. A magnificent invention such as Mr. Babbage’s Analytical Engine could never be entirely forgotten once the idea of it was set free into the world. It might be neglected, perhaps for years, but eventually its time would come, and it would thrive.

  As for me, I often feel that my time is running out, and that I will no
t live to see the Analytical Engine constructed. I will not marvel as it transforms the world; I will not enjoy a sense of proud vindication when my own Great Work is finally respected and hailed as prophetic. But I daresay I will not be forgotten. This narrative will survive me, as will my Notes, and when Mr. Charles Babbage finally realizes his magnificent dream, my contributions also will be celebrated. But whether this will be next year or many decades from now, even with the combined powers of my intellect and my imagination I cannot know for certain. I can only hope.

  Ours was a false dawn, a soft, brilliant glow that swiftly faded, but eventually day would break in truth, and our sun would rise and it would shine more brightly than either of us could imagine.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  On 1 May 1851, Ada and William King, Lord and Lady Lovelace, attended the grand opening ceremony of the Great Exhibition at the completed Crystal Palace, where Prince Albert declared that the event would usher in an era of peace, goodwill, and scientific cooperation throughout the world. They were also on the guest list for the magnificent ball Queen Victoria hosted in honor of the Great Exhibition at Buckingham Palace on 19 May. The two thousand guests began the dancing with the Great Exhibition Quadrille at ten P.M., dined at midnight, and carried on dancing and celebrating until dawn.

  Ada’s health continued to decline, and in June 1851, two physicians mulled over her symptoms and concluded that she had cancer of the womb. They reported their diagnosis to William, who summoned Dr. Locock to conduct an internal exam, which revealed that Ada’s cervix was covered in cancerous lesions. He reported his findings to William, and together they decided not to tell Ada. But her symptoms continued to worsen, and over time, her letters strongly indicate that she knew she was seriously ill. Letters to her mother and children through 1852 suggest that she knew she was dying.

  In the last months of her life, Ada suffered agonizing pain that not even high doses of laudanum could entirely assuage. Her distress was worsened by lingering estrangement with her mother, increasing discord between her mother and William, and intense anxiety about her gambling debts.

  Sensing that she had little time left, Ada became desperate to see her children. It would have been an easy journey for Annabella, who at this time evidently was living at East Horsley Park with her father, but Byron was still at sea and Ralph was in Switzerland, where Lady Byron had sent him to further his education. Byron was granted leave, and on 6 August 1852 he arrived home. “You must be prepared to see a very handsome young man!” Ada proudly wrote to her mother after their reunion. “No longer a Boy! Tall & stout, the voice formed & manly; but really he is so splendidly handsome. I am quite amazed!” More somberly, she added, “He was much agitated at meeting me; & quite upset at alteration which he remarked; altho’ he controlled himself in a very manly way.” Seeing Byron raised Ada’s spirits, and she expressed great contentment when he and Annabella took turns bathing her brow.

  On 12 August, when Charles Babbage visited Ada on her sickbed, she gave him a handwritten note asking him to serve as her executor. He agreed to do so, enraging Lady Byron, but he soon learned that Ada’s note did not give him the legal authority to serve as she requested. Before Ada could act on this information, her deteriorating condition—and interference from her mother—prevented her from taking the necessary steps to legally make him her executor.

  On 15 August, Ada told William that she wanted to be interred beside her father in the Byron family vault near Newstead Abbey. She had already discussed her wishes with Colonel Wildman, but she wanted William to write to the colonel and confirm their arrangements. Colonel Wildman immediately wrote back to declare that he considered fulfilling her wishes to be a sacred duty. Lady Byron was very displeased, but she had no choice but to acquiesce once Ada’s wishes were publicly known. Instead she told her friends that it had been her idea all along.

  A week later, Ada asked to see her friend Charles Dickens, and after he hurried to her bedside, she asked him to read aloud to her from her favorite of his books, Dombey and Son. The chapter she requested, “What the Waves Were Always Saying,” was the death scene of young Paul Dombey, one of the most well-known and heartrending in literature of the time. Hearing the poignant lines in her friend’s rich, sonorous voice seemed to comfort her.

  By the end of August, Lady Byron had moved into 6 Great Cumberland Place to care for her dying daughter. With William’s consent she assumed control of the household, dismissing Ada’s servants, replacing them with her own, and deciding who could visit her and whose letters she would be read. One of her first decisions was to ban Babbage from the house. He and Ada never saw each other again.

  Lady Byron made it her mission to save Ada’s soul before she perished. She and several of her friends agreed that Ada’s disease was providential, granting her time for “weaning her from temptation, & turning her thoughts to higher and better things.”

  On 26 August, Ralph at last arrived home after a frantic journey from Switzerland, but Ada’s joy at seeing her youngest child again was fleeting. The next morning she suffered a seizure, and in the days that followed she was wracked by intermittent convulsions. Her physicians were sure she had only hours to live, but she endured.

  In early September, Lady Byron urged Ada to confess her sins to William and beg his forgiveness. Ada’s confession has been lost to history, but some historians suggest that she admitted to an extramarital affair or additional, more serious debts. Whatever she told him, according to one account, her words drove him into a rage and compelled him to shout at his dying, stricken, remorseful wife that he hoped God would have mercy on her soul.

  On 27 November 1852, Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace, died at home of uterine cancer at the age of thirty-six. One week later, she was laid to rest beside her father in the Byron family tomb at the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene in Hucknall Torkard, Nottinghamshire.

  For almost two decades after the death of his most devoted collaborator, Charles Babbage continued to work on the cogwheel computers that had so captivated her imagination. He was still improving his designs for the Analytical Engine when, at nearly eighty years of age, he died on 18 October 1871, after a brief illness. He never completed building either of his engines.

  In 1985, Dr. Allan Bromley of the University of Sydney, who had studied Babbage’s original drawings at the Science Museum library in London, proposed to construct Babbage’s Difference Engine No. 2 in honor of the two hundredth anniversary of Babbage’s birth. Although modern manufacturing techniques were employed, the builders used only materials similar in composition to what would have been available to Babbage, and they were careful not to exceed the precision that Babbage’s engineer would have been able to produce. The computing section was completed in 1991, the bicentennial of Babbage’s birth, and the printing device was finished in 2002. At the time of this writing, this complete, fully operational Difference Engine No. 2 is on display at the Science Museum in London. A second version, created for a private benefactor, was exhibited at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, until January 2016.

  Many scholars believe that the algorithm Ada wrote instructing the Analytical Engine to generate a table of Bernoulli numbers should be recognized as the first computer program, making her the first computer programmer. Others dispute this characterization, or they agree that the algorithm is indeed an early computer program but they give all the credit to Babbage. Either way, it should not be denied that Ada possessed a vision of what calculating engines could do that far surpassed that of any of her contemporaries, including Babbage himself.

  It is fascinating to imagine how different the world might be today if Babbage had managed to see his Analytical Engine built in his lifetime. “Before ten years are over,” Ada wrote to Babbage in July 1843, “the Devil’s in it if I have not sucked out some of the life-blood from the mysteries of this universe, in a way that no purely mortal lips or brains could do. No one knows what
almost awful energy & power lie yet undeveloped in that wiry little system of mine.”

  It is an immeasurable loss to mathematics, computing, and poetical science that Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace, never had the chance to discover the fullness of that energy and power.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Enchantress of Numbers is a work of fiction inspired by history. For me, one of the great joys of writing historical fiction is the opportunity to bring little-known or forgotten historical figures to the forefront of the story. Women and people of color, especially, have too often been relegated to the margins and footnotes, if they make it into the historical narrative at all. I love introducing readers to these courageous, extraordinary people—people like Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace; like Elizabeth Keckley, Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker; or like Elizabeth Van Lew, The Spymistress; and so many others—and allowing readers to witness transformative events in history through their eyes.

  In my novels, I try to adhere to the historical record as closely as I can where significant events and people are concerned, but I’m usually comfortable taking liberties with lesser-known historical figures and situations. Sometimes I have no choice. While researching Enchantress of Numbers, I discovered that Ada had many nurses and governesses throughout her childhood, but that very few of their names appeared in surviving documents. Thus Miss Noble and Miss Thorne are entirely fictitious creations, the kind of loving, affectionate nannies I hoped Ada might have known. Correspondence between Lady Byron and her friends suggest that Ada was romantically involved with her tutor, but the man’s identity remains obscure, which is no surprise given how determined Lady Byron was to prevent scandal. With little to go on, I went along with the historians who suspect that William Turner was Ada’s first love, but I was obliged to fill in the details about his appearance, behavior, speech, and almost everything else myself. As for the scoundrel Mr. Knight, who was all too real, his name was actually Charles Knight Murray. In my novel I altered his name slightly to Charles Murray Knight to avoid confusion with the other Mr. Murray in Ada’s life, Lord Byron’s publisher. The two Mr. Murrays are not related, as far as I could determine.