Bifrons, Kent
June 1826

Not long after the incident of the ghost in the gallery, Mamma makes an exciting announcement. ‘We are to take a tour of Europe,’ she declares over dinner. ‘There are a great many places that I want to go, and it will do you a world of good, Ada, after your ill-health, to see something of the Continent.’

The news comes as the most wonderful surprise: she is speaking of a Grand Tour, in the old tradition, and I can scarcely believe it. ‘Will we go alone, Mamma?’ I ask, putting down my soup spoon with a clatter.

‘No, indeed, Ada. My cousin Robert, and a number of my friends will join us at various times. Miss Montgomery, and Mrs Siddons and Mrs Chaloner.’

I have always adored Mary Montgomery – there are times when I think of her as a relation, and not simply a friend of Mamma’s; I believe that Mary is as interested in my education as my mother is. But while I also like Harriet Siddons, an actress and passionate educational reformer who engages in the longest conversations with Mamma on the subject, I am less enthusiastic about Louisa Chaloner. I have never forgotten that she once told me I was not beautiful.

‘What about Miss Stamp?’ I say, suddenly worried that my new-ish governess will not be coming with us.

‘Of course we shall have the pleasure of the company of Miss Stamp,’ says Mamma. ‘Now that your health is a little better, there is no reason for the pace of your studies to abate.’

Plans develop most enticingly. Clothing and sundry necessities must be bought; letters sent, arrangements made for accommodation and transport; our possessions packed into trunks... at times, I am so filled with anticipation that I can barely eat. My dreams, always colourful, grow more vivid and delicious than ever, loaded with lofty castles, rolling hills, elaborately-dressed noblemen; thick, dark forests teeming with wolves, and long golden beaches fringing unfamiliar seas. I pore over the atlas given to me by the Baillie sisters for hours, and Miss Stamp helps me to draw into my commonplace book the route Mamma intends us to take. Mamma says that we will be away for as long as a year, and perhaps longer.

‘It will be the furthest geographical distance I have ever been from home,’ I tell Miss Stamp, as we sort through the books that we want to take with us. ‘The same is true for Mamma too. Why do you suppose she has had such a change of heart? Perhaps the spirit of adventure has come upon her.’

‘You must remember, Ada, that England and France are no longer at war; that, to me, seems like the primary reason,’ says Miss Stamp, rescuing the books I have piled haphazardly onto a chair from near-collapse. ‘There’s also the matter of your grandparents,’ she adds gently. ‘Now they are deceased, your mother is more at liberty to plan this kind of lengthy journey. I believe, moreover, that one of your mother’s primary motives for this trip is educational. She wants to visit the famed Hofwyl Institute in Switzerland.’

It is true that Mamma has been talking for some time about her admiration for the founder of the Swiss institute, Dr Fellenberg, and his methods. It is in her nature to need to see how things work, and to show me how they work also; I think of our early visit to the glass factory in the North of England – her pale, serious face as she pointed out various intricacies of the operation. ‘Do you see, Ada? Do you see?’ she would say, and I would look, and try to understand.

‘We must take Walkingame,’ says Miss Stamp, selecting a calf-bound textbook from the pile. ‘And Pasley’s Practical Geometry Method. We will have to keep up your arithmetic.’

On my dressing table is a small box, silk-lined, that contains the handful of items that my father sent me in the years before his death. There is a talismanic ring, wonderfully and surprisingly heavy to hold, and a locket that bears the inscription ‘Water is thicker than blood’. I wonder if I should take the little box with me – it seems wrong, somehow, to leave it for a year or more, unopened... but then I think of the highwaymen that might very well stalk the roads of the Continent, waiting to pounce on wealthy voyagers, and decide that Bifrons is a safer place for my treasures.

‘And what’s this little book, Ada?’ says Miss Stamp.

‘Oh, just a notebook,’ I say, taking it. ‘A book of poems.’

‘Your poems?’

‘Yes.’ I’d almost forgotten about them: a hotchpotch collection of verses, written down in odd moments. Limericks, acrostics – any kind of poem I could think of, really. None particularly good. But Miss Stamp is keen to hear one, and so – rather shyly – I select one that I don’t think is too badly-constructed, and begin:

‘My name is Ada Byron, and I see the world in numbers.

Once I saw in pairs: eyes, cuffs, slippers;

Then I saw in threes: good, better, best;

Four compass-points: North, South, East, West.

Five upon my fingers, and ten upon my toes.

For the world contains more numbers than anybody knows.’

‘Oh, but it’s charming, Ada! When did you write that?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I say, squinting at the date at the bottom of the page. ‘I think it was when I had begun arithmetic properly.’

For a while, neither of us speaks. I don’t know what Miss Stamp is thinking about, as we continue to sift through the books on the shelves, each choosing what she feels might be most useful for a tour of the Continent, and what might reasonably be left behind. It’s a warm day; the windows are shut, and I fall, as I so often do, into a kind of daze. And all the while the books mount up, looking for all the world like the brightly-coloured towers that I once, not so long ago, built out of blocks in our Hampstead garden.

A thought occurs to me, all of a sudden: worlds are built out of books, just as buildings are built out of blocks... The daze deepens; my thoughts spin themselves into an ever-widening web, each filament glinting like a moonbeam shard. I see cities entirely constructed from books, from foundations to firmament – walls of tomes of green and blue and brown, some slim, some sturdy, but each forming an essential, immutable part of the fabric of the architecture... It’s an entrancing scene. And I realise that this is the feeling of IDEAS – of an idea coming upon me – and a wave of such dizzying, blissful excitement that the idea must, perforce, be a good one.

‘Miss Stamp,’ I say. ‘I’ve just realised something: a decision about my future. I want to become a writer.’

‘What an excellent idea,’ she responds, smiling at me with such approval that I feel like a spring bud, blossoming in the benevolent light of the sun. ‘Novels? Plays?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ I say. ‘Perhaps I shall not limit myself to any one form of writing.’

‘Well, our European expedition will no doubt furnish you with plenty of ideas,’ she says. ‘Who knows – perhaps you will turn out poetical after all?’