Fordhook, Ealing
March 1833

Mary Montgomery is staying with us at present, and I am greatly relieved to have her companionship. Not a Fury, never a Fury, she has offered to take me out for the morning. We have come to the Strand to visit the National Gallery of Practical Science, more commonly known as the Adelaide, named after the Queen. The street is crowded: a man is selling bread from a cart, while a crowd of gawkers outside a shop window holds up our progress.

As we reach the gallery, I see a handwritten sign proclaiming: cooking with gas: a novel method by mr hicks. A tow-headed urchin with scabbed knees glowers at us from a doorway, and I remember what Mamma said about the separation between rich and poor. It jolts me – I suppose that I see the evidence of her words only when I am in the heart of London. When I am removed to the green pastures of Ealing, it’s easier to forget.

I’ve always been impressed by the fearless way that Mary forges through crowd-filled spaces, in spite of the fact that she finds it difficult to walk. With the aid of a slim walking stick, she is a determined figure in her voluminous walking-out dress; people stand back when she passes, making room for her.

The gallery comprises a central room, long and high-ceilinged, with a domed roof and an upper walkway, and smaller rooms sprouting from this middle atrium on both sides. The walls are a pretty pale colour, a cross between the sky and the sea – a fitting choice, I think, for a place devoted to curiosities of the imagination. A model canal – filled to the brim with water – divides the main room lengthways; little mechanical boats float upon it, serene as swans, and there are several people watching their progress intently. From the upper level come the thudding footfalls of visitors looking at the paintings.

We have a little time before the cooking demonstration begins, and so we wander about, not looking for anything in particular. A pocket thermometer in a glass case, a lithographic press, a number of curious fossils... then my eye is caught by a handsome, weighty-looking instrument, the likes of which I’ve never seen before, at the other end of the gallery. There is a man standing in front of it, in workmen’s overalls. In his hands he shuffles a deck of rectangular cards – they are rather larger than playing cards. He is, perhaps, making sure that they are in the correct order.

‘That is a Jacquard loom,’ says Mary, who has followed me. ‘It was designed by a Frenchman, Joseph Marie Jacquard, at the beginning of the century. Truly a unique invention, this.’

‘What does it do?’ I say. ‘Weaving?’

‘Silk-weaving, yes. Do you know how weaving is commonly done?’

‘The weft is woven over and under the warp,’ I say, ‘so that you have an interlacing pattern.’

‘That is quite correct. Now, this loom is able to do something rather more complicated. You’ve heard of the term “figured fabrics”?’ says Mary.

‘Those silks with pictures on them,’ I say.

‘Yes – very, very expensive fabrics they are too. They might feature sumptuous landscapes or fruit or flowers. There’s one hanging in the drawing room at Fordhook. It would take two weavers a day to weave perhaps an inch of silk, and no more. Slow work.’

‘Indeed,’ I say, enjoying the story. ‘So why is this loom different?’

‘See those cards there? With the holes in them? Those cards are punched in particular configurations that correspond to whatever pattern or picture is desired. They were Jacquard’s invention.’

We watch as the weaver feeds the cards into a mechanism at the top of the loom.

‘How do you get from the pattern to the punched holes?’ I ask him.

‘It’s done by the card maker,’ he says, ‘so I’m not rightly sure. As far as I’m aware, the pattern’s painted onto a grid. If a square on the grid is painted in, then he’d punch a hole in the card. If the square isn’t painted in, then there’d be no hole.’

I think about this for a while, and realise that I understand. The small round holes remind me, somehow, of musical notation – another system in which a pattern is represented by a series of identical circles, differentiated by their placement. It is beautiful – both simple and complicated at the same time. Now the mechanism draws down the series of cards – they are laced together – with a rattling sound. I am just wondering what will happen next when the weaver says: ‘Wherever there’s a hole, a pin will pass through it, and a hook will raise a warp thread, if you understand my meaning.’

A kind of feverish excitement tingles at the back of my neck as I watch the shuttle travel up and down, industrious, precise, and the pattern – it is a fairly simple one, of different-coloured triangles – begins to appear.

Mary says: ‘How long, would you say, it takes you to weave a foot of fabric? On your own?’

Without looking up, the weaver says: ‘I could weave double that in a day, ma’am, with no trouble.’

Mary turns to me. ‘An incredible difference. Just think, Ada, of the possibilities! Any picture you could dream of, all reduced to a series of punched cards.’

I gaze at the loom with new admiration, my Ada-brain ticking over with this delicious information. Just think of the possibilities, said Mary. Yes: the possibilities. Any picture at all, produced not from a drawing, but from a series of holes in a particular configuration...

‘Come, Ada. The cooking demonstration is about to begin,’ Mary says.

I bid a wistful goodbye to the loom and follow her. We enter a small, circular exhibition space with a high ceiling, lamp-lit and absolutely packed with people. Most are women, but I can see a handful of men too, glossy in their black coats, laughing, looking around impatiently, waiting to be amused and enlightened.

‘Look,’ says Mary. ‘That’s Michael Faraday.’

‘Where? I can’t see—’

She ushers me in front of her, pointing subtly to a man in the centre of his group, and there he is: short – perhaps shorter than I am, with a mass of curly hair and coal-dark eyes. He looks to be about forty. Unlike the jostling, jocular crowd, he is silent, standing patiently in front of the exhibition stand. Michael Faraday is renowned for his work on electromagnetic induction. Mamma has always been especially fascinated by him; she’ll be delighted to hear that Mary and I have actually seen him in the flesh.

‘He gives lectures,’ says Mary. ‘Wonderful lectures. We’ll go, Ada.’

‘I would like that.’

‘How is your shorthand progressing? Is it as dull as you anticipated?’

At this, I suppress laughter: that I could ever have been unenthused by the prospect of learning shorthand. How ignorant I was! ‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s not dull in the slightest. A most useful skill, and one that I find increasingly worthwhile. All my life, Mary, I have found writing quite hard – not the ideas bit, or even the spelling and grammar – but the writing, the physical writing. I never knew why; I just thought it was something to be endured. But Ja— Mr Hopkins says that I have too much laxity in my fingers, and now he has shown me how to exert far better control over my hand.’

‘Ada, that’s wonderful,’ says Mary, though she looks slightly taken aback by the level of detail I have just offered her in my response. ‘The better your shorthand is, the more you’ll get out of the lectures. Ah! Mr Hicks has arrived.’

We watch, fascinated, as a tall man with luxuriant moustaches introduces himself and his novel method of cooking. Mr Faraday is watching too, leaning forward to better see the cooking apparatus, the flame that leaps up, yellowy-orange, when Mr Hicks holds a match to the gas. An assistant brings a plump, plucked pigeon on a metal skewer, and soon the air of the exhibition space is filled with the tang of roasting meat.

‘This pigeon, ladies and gentlemen, will be fully cooked – roasted to perfection – in precisely twelve minutes’ time,’ says Mr Hicks, in a matter-of-fact, rather nasal voice. Oohs and ahhs of excitement from the crowd. One woman turns to another and says: ‘Why, Emily, but this will change everything.’

At home, over lunch, I tell Mamma about our morning. ‘Mr Hicks roasted mutton, as well as pigeons,’ I say, summing up. ‘And Mr Faraday was there.’

‘Goodness,’ says Mamma, who is very keen on mutton. ‘I am glad to hear that your mind was suitably exercised by the excursion.’

‘Oh, it was,’ I say. ‘A lady commented to her friend that it would change everything. So much is changing now, isn’t it?’

Mamma agrees, and then makes an interesting point. ‘You must remember that – in the short term, at least – the Jacquard loom did not change everyone’s lives for the better.’

‘What do you— Oh,’ I say. ‘I see. The weavers.’

‘There were riots, I believe, in the city of Lyon. Looms smashed in protest. Replace too many men with machines, without considering any viable alternatives, and there will always be consequences.’

Mamma thinks very seriously, and very often, about the welfare of everyone. She was being quite truthful when she uttered that phrase of Dr Fellenberg’s: ‘The rich have helpers enough; help thou the poor’. When the Reform Bill was passed last year and the rotten boroughs (those with one or even two parliamentary representatives, but no constituents, thus creating a deeply unfair imbalance of representation) were abolished, Mamma tells me that she thinks her cheers might have been heard all the way across the farmland of Ealing and in the Palace of Westminster itself. Yes: her civic-minded sense of doing good is probably one of her best points. I will admit that.

Another thing happened today, however, and I will not be telling Mamma about it; Mary has counselled me not to, and I trust Mary to advise me correctly.

As she and I were coming out of the Adelaide, we saw a woman standing across the street, unmistakably watching us – or rather, watching me. Used to being stared at, if not comfortable with it, I made to follow Mary into the carriage that was awaiting us. But the woman, seeing that we were about to leave, began to wave earnestly and to mouth my name. Then came a flurry of carriages and barrows, rattling at speed along the road, and I lost sight of her.

I was about to climb up into the carriage when I looked around, and there she was at my side. She was a little taller than me, rather buxom, with untidy, darkish-fair hair and a sweet, rather foolish expression. ‘Ada,’ she said. ‘Is it really you? I sent a prayer-book to you for your birthday – oh, two or three years ago now. Did you never get it?’

From the carriage, Mary called: ‘Come, Ada; we must be on our way.’ But I was momentarily transfixed, searching my memories for a face that matched the one that was now before me. Familiar? A little, yes, perhaps...

And then I said: ‘You are my Aunt Augusta.’

She smiled, revealing small uneven teeth. ‘That’s right. Your father’s sister. Well, half-sister, really. Oh, to finally look at you, grown so tall! Your face... it is so like his – yes, yes, I can see it!’ Reaching out with a hot, dry hand, she touched a finger to my chin. ‘They say you have your mother’s intelligence too.’

‘I—’ But I didn’t know what to say to her, to this Aunt Augusta whom I had never before met.

Another cry from Mary, this time shrill with impatience, which was rather unlike her. ‘Ada! Do hurry up; the carriage can’t wait here indefinitely.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled to this newly-discovered aunt, in whose face I was just able to detect glimpses of my father. ‘I can’t... I have to...’

She smiled and made a funny, tangled gesture with her head – a cross between a nod and a shake – and before long the carriage was rattling away. I looked back, just once, and saw her, standing alone on the pavement, still wearing that sweet, wistful expression.

‘It would be best if you didn’t tell your mother that we saw Mrs Leigh,’ said Mary on our way home.

‘Why not?’

‘They have a difficult relationship. Without going into too much detail, I believe she continually asks your mother for money. Being a kind-hearted soul, and having promised your father to look after Augusta, Annabella generally capitulates.’

I sat back, not quite satisfied with this.

Now, watching my mother finish everything on her plate, I wonder again if there might be another reason. Perhaps there was an argument of some kind between Augusta Leigh and my mother, something bitterly divisive, irreparable... Augusta seemed like a gentle-natured woman; could she, perhaps, have taken my father’s side over my mother’s cold-natured treatment of him?

Did my mother do something that Augusta simply couldn’t forgive?