Fordhook, Ealing
February 1833

The occasion of someone new arriving to teach me is a familiar one. It has happened so many times, and I am used to the pattern of it: the breathless, eager governess, armed with her ambitions; the tall, grey-haired man of letters, primed by my mother for wise tutelage. Oh, I have grown very accustomed to it indeed. But when my shorthand tutor finally arrives on a Tuesday morning, I find myself totally unprepared for my reaction to him. A breathless, eager governess he is not, nor grey-haired man of letters; he turns out to be someone far, far more interesting.

I am waiting at an upstairs window when he arrives, and the first glimpse I have of him is a bird’s one – just as if I were still hiding in the sycamore tree. There he is: a young man – not tall, slightly built, though it’s hard to tell from where I’m standing – walking briskly up the steps to the front door. He moves with confidence: rare for one who has never been here before. He wears a fawn-coloured top hat; the tail of his frock coat flies behind him. Now the bell peals with a great, theatrical clang and Fury the First appears at my elbow.

‘Come, Ada. Mr Hopkins is here.’

Mamma is in the process of subjecting the newcomer to a short interview in the entrance hall. I come down the stairs, mulishly slow, holding up the progress of the Fury who is coming down behind me, and hoping she’ll trip. I also feel shy suddenly, and unsure of myself. I’ve never been tutored by a young man before. The tutor seems unaware of our arrival; he is talking to Mamma, gesticulating as he speaks. He laughs: it’s a rich chuckle that echoes on the marble floor. He has a very straight nose that turns up just at the end, as though drawn by a pencil that was suddenly lifted from the page. Mamma is smiling; she seems pleased by him.

‘Do you have far to travel, Mr Hopkins?’ she asks.

‘No, no. A pleasant walk across the fields, in Hanger Hill. Our house is the Old Rectory – perhaps a mile or so from here.’

Mamma says: ‘And here is Ada.’

At once, Mr Hopkins spins round like a wind-up figurine. The smile broadens; his eyes – they are brown – narrow almost into parallelograms as he does so. He comes towards me, holding out his hand, which I take. ‘What a great privilege it is for me, Miss Byron, to have this opportunity.’

I look at him, absorbing it all: the tilted nose, the rum-dark eyes, the longish hair, which is the colour of burnt butter beneath his hat. His is a pleasant, intelligent, open face – he is not handsome, precisely, but then I myself am not beautiful. I sense a hovering Fury, realise I haven’t spoken, and mumble indistinctly, ‘I am most pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Hopkins.’

In my head, though, I do not think of him as Mr Hopkins. He is James.

Over our first lesson, I find out more. James Hopkins is twenty-two. He is a graduate of the University of London, a secular institution, only recently set up, of which Mamma approves. He has taught shorthand to many young ladies, and enjoys it. He smells nice; this is an unusual thing for me to observe, but he does – it’s not a scent that I can find words to describe, but I like it nonetheless. I find myself quite unable to concentrate on anything he says that pertains to shorthand.

‘The Art of Writing,’ he says (he is soft-spoken, and quick in his delivery), ‘is, quite simply, one of the most important things that a young person like you, Miss Byron, can study today.’

‘Why is that?’ I say. We are sitting in the library; the door is ajar, and from time to time footsteps are heard marching past, doors swinging shut in other parts of the house. I wish – as I so often wish – that this lesson could take place outside. The trees are wintry spindles and the wind is high, and I would naturally prefer not to be spied on.

James Hopkins shifts in his chair – he is sitting at the head of the mahogany library table, and I to his left – so that he is almost facing me. ‘Let me ask you another question. What is writing for?’

‘It’s for...’ I consider. It’s a good question. I think about all the different kinds of writing that I have, in my shortish life, enjoyed; and the different kinds of writing that I’ve aspired to try myself. I’ve thought a lot about the fact that I love to write, but not necessarily about why. But I’m never silent for long. I think of my father in the Villa Diodati, contemplating the silvery pattern of moonlight on water as he composed his verses. ‘It’s for telling stories,’ I say.

‘Always?’

I hesitate, feeling stupid, and correct myself. ‘Not always, no,’ I say. ‘It’s... it’s for the communication of ideas.’

There’s that shy-wide smile again; his teeth are wondrously even, although one, on the upper left, is missing. ‘Yes, Miss Byron. That is quite right. Without the communication of ideas, how would we be able to make any progress in society? It all comes down to writing.’

‘But is it really an Art?’ I say, wanting to prolong the discussion now.

‘That is a good question. Yes, writing is, absolutely, an Art. Let us think about the matter carefully. Imagine that you are at a lecture. Someone is speaking of a new development in...’ He pauses, struggling to think of something.

‘The mechanics of... of flying,’ I supply. He looks a little taken aback. I supply an alternative: ‘Or the movement of the planets.’

‘The planets! Yes! Very good,’ says James Hopkins. His hands fly apart as he speaks, moving almost in time to his words. He has long-boned hands, expressive ones. For a moment I think about moving my own hand to touch his – but, of course, I don’t do anything of the kind. Behind us, the door creaks, and Fury the Third drifts in, making a pretence of searching for a particular book in the shelves. I know when I am being watched. James Hopkins, meanwhile, does not even notice the intrusion, so focused is he on his discourse. ‘There you are, in the front row, at the lecture. You have been invited to make notes for the speaker. Those notes are to appear in a prestigious publication. You are delighted – immensely proud to have been given such a task. You have a pen and some paper. You are quite ready (or so you think). The lights are dimmed as the speaker takes his place on the podium and the lecture begins. He starts to talk. He speaks fast – much faster than you had anticipated.’

James Hopkins speaks very fast himself; I cling to each word, absorbing it all as though it were poetry. ‘Alas! You have dropped your pen. A gallant young man to your right picks it up.’ The smile again. ‘You’ve missed a bit, but it doesn’t matter. You will remember it later, you think. The lecture continues. You are writing, writing... faithfully, you copy down what the speaker is saying. But you can’t catch it all; in your efforts to keep up, whole words, and then whole phrases are missed. Soon, the entire transcript becomes devoid of meaning. You leave the lecture hall disheartened, wishing that there could have been some way to capture those words for posterity. For what good is a half-communicated notion? Why, none at all.’

He pauses. The dramatic effect is profound. I am gazing at him, mouth half-open, waiting for what comes next. The Fury indulges in a fit of coughing as she carries a pile of books out of the room.

‘That,’ says James Hopkins, ‘is why we learn shorthand. Now, Miss Byron, will you take up your own pen, if you please, and write something for me.’

‘What should I write?’

‘Oh, anything at all; it doesn’t matter what it is.’

My fingers are not precisely steady as I dip the nib of my pen into the inkwell. I want to think of something clever to write, something that will impress him. A line from a poem of my father’s comes to me, then, and I inscribe it in my best copperplate.

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

‘How interesting,’ says Mr Hopkins, who has watched me closely. ‘Most people, you know, if invited to write something of their own choosing, simply write their names. You must have an original mind.’

I can feel my cheeks colouring and wish that I could be more in control of myself than this – as in control as he seems to be. Does he know what it is that I have written? It depends, I suppose, on whether he is acquainted with Byron’s verses. I say: ‘Those are not original words.’

‘No, indeed. They are the opening line of “Darkness”, are they not?’

‘I... yes, you’re quite right.’ He does know my father’s work. Perhaps everyone does.

‘Now, Miss Byron, I have made some observations of the way in which you write,’ says Mr Hopkins. ‘Do not be offended when I say that your posture, when you write, is a little stiff, with too much tension in the shoulders.’

‘Oh,’ I say.

‘Furthermore: you place too much pressure on the page. The letters are clear and legible, but only because you took great pains to make them so. What would happen, I wonder, if you were to write them fast?’

Dipping my pen afresh, I rewrite the line. I think about what he has said – my posture is too stiff, the pressure exerted on the page too great – but I don’t know what to change. I feel mildly insulted, although this is ridiculous, since it is his job to help me to improve; more than this, though, I am desperate to impress him. In an attempt to write at speed, I lose my grip on my pen on a down-stroke and score a jagged diagonal line down the page. I stop, rueful and dissatisfied.

‘Don’t give up,’ says Mr Hopkins. ‘Try again.’

‘It’s impossible. I can’t write any faster and make it appear in any way legible.’

Ah, but there’s the smile again, just when I am feeling almost tearful with frustration.

Mr Hopkins opens a leather-bound box and takes out a curious-looking object – it almost looks like an ornament of some kind, made from wire and – I think – ivory.

‘What is that?’ I say.

‘An “aidergraph”, or Hand Guide, as it’s generally known. It will help to hold your hand in place, while preventing unwanted flexion in your fingers.’

‘No,’ I say firmly.

‘It won’t hurt.’

‘Oh, very well,’ I say. He secures the aidergraph – it is like a sequence of interlocking ivory rings – and asks me to move my wrist, to extend each finger.

‘How does it feel?’ says Mr Hopkins.

‘I hate it,’ I say. ‘I don’t like to be bound by things.’

‘At least try the line again, before you take it off.’

He must be mad, I think, to imagine that this oddity will make a positive difference to my writing. But I want the lesson to continue, undisrupted by any refusal on my part to go along with his plans. And so, I dip once more, and roll my pen ever so slightly between my fingers before I lay the nib to the page, experimenting with my new range of motion. The aidergraph no longer presses quite so unpleasantly – perhaps the unpleasantness of it was inferred, rather than truly felt – and as I write the line for the third time, I find that the letters that form themselves are smoother, somehow, than they were before.

‘Good,’ says Mr Hopkins. ‘That’s very good.’

My hand is trembling – not from the exertion, but from the heavy-hot self-awareness that suffuses me. Can he tell? I wonder. Even when I was very young – five, six – and had to lie perfectly still upon the board in the nursery, feeling like dough beneath an angry rolling pin, the afternoon weighing down my bones... I never felt as awkward and uncomfortable as this. I must say something; I’ve been silent too long, and he will think that I am being rude. I look at him and say: ‘Will I make progress, Mr Hopkins?’

‘Oh, yes,’ says my tutor. His eyes are not brown, I realise now: they are greenish-brown, a cross between rain-soaked moss and tree bark. For good measure, he smiles a final time. ‘Certainly, Miss Byron, you will.’