Fordhook, Ealing
June 1833

My favourite letter has always been the letter I. The simplest of strokes, middle vowel in a family of five, it stands upright as a soldier, boasting its lines of symmetry. It’s a near-relation of the number 1, another marker of primacy. I is a pronoun: not the foghorn-blast of me, me – just a simple proclamation. I am the centre of my own universe. I am the most important person in my own world. It echoes in my head, a lyrical bending of tongue to palate.

I, Ada.

I think it so often – I, Ada, have ridden a horse; I, Ada, have kissed my tutor – and I love the way it sounds. Perhaps it is because I’m an only child; I grew up thinking only (or else mostly) of myself, because I had no sibling.

And now I, Ada, have been presented at Court, it seems that a husband must be found for me. One of the first events that I attended was a state ball at the Palace at St James’ – no small affair; someone told me afterward that over seven hundred guests had been present. Proceedings began at ten o’clock. For once, I was glad of Mamma’s company; there was such an air of ornate splendour about the occasion that I was in danger of being entirely overwhelmed. I gazed in wonder at the gentlemen in full court-dress, the knights laden with insignia, the ladies in their dresses of impossible finery, as they entered the state rooms. All along the staircase stood the Yeomen of the Guard, motionless as bronze casts as we passed.

‘There is the Prince Royal of France,’ whispered Mamma. ‘That gentlemen there – no, don’t stare, Ada – is the Russian Ambassador. And there is the Duchess of Kent.’

The throne room had been prepared for dancing; the throne and platform had been temporarily removed, and in the corner was stationed the quadrille band. In the ballroom there was another band (a special piece of music had apparently been composed for the Duke of Orléans), and a raised platform on which had been placed seats of gold and red damask for their majesties. Between the two ballrooms was a drawing room, and I noticed a smaller room set out for cards, and another with tables stocked with ices and other refreshments.

When the King and Queen entered, the band played God Save the King, and then the dancing began. First a gallopade, and then a quadrille... I participated in neither of these, preferring to watch as the Duke of Brunswick made his way into the centre of the room with his dancing partner. Then a young man approached with a low bow, introducing himself as Mr Edward Cowley, and I accepted his invitation to dance, for I knew the steps to the mazurka quite well, and was keen to demonstrate them. I don’t remember what we spoke about as we danced – the usual formulaic pleasantries, no doubt. Mr Cowley danced quite well, with both elegance and confidence. Midway through the mazurka, I felt a sudden, sharp jolt of unhappiness – it struck me with all the haste of a fever – that I was dancing with someone who was not James.

‘Are you quite well, Miss Byron?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said. But I could see Mamma watching me now, from the edge of the dancing.

‘Who was that young man?’ she asked, when the dance was over and my partner had excused himself.

‘A Mr Cowley,’ I said.

‘A man with no title,’ she said at once, as I had known she would.

‘Mamma,’ I protested. ‘It does not to me seem fair that your thoughts should advance to matrimony so quickly. It was only a mazurka.’

But after that, my enjoyment of the evening faded, and by the time supper was served at one o’clock, I was longing to go home. Mamma had reminded me of the purpose of my attendance at such things as state balls – not to eat, and dance, and wear fur-trimmed dresses and pearls – but to be seen by the right people and, in time, to meet the right person.

Now, some weeks later, I still find myself unsure about how I truly feel about it all. I am supposed to look attractive, rather than merely presentable – something I’ve never thought too much about. There are so many formalities to be observed that I feel positively baffled at times and long to do what Mamma always does when she’s had enough of something, and lie down for an hour or so in a darkened room. Sometimes, indeed, I do slip away early, pleading a headache that is no lie; but at other times I enter into the spirit of the proceedings as best I can, because that is what I promised that I would do.

Wherever I go, whomever I meet, Mamma is never more than six feet away, watching me discreetly as she converses with one of her acquaintances. Ever since the James Hopkins Affair, she has dispensed with the Furies and now prefers to chaperone me herself – although there are occasional excursions with Mary Montgomery to look forward to still.

But my Ada-brain longs for something else; something more. There’s only so much enthusiasm I can summon for dresses and slippers, refreshments and dance steps, over and over again, a pattern that becomes a parody of repetition.

And then there are the things that I actively dislike, such as the women who sit clustered in a corner, bosoms heaving in low-cut dresses, flapping their fans in front of their faces. Sometimes – I am sure of it – one of them leans in to the others, cheeks salmon-pink with pleasure, and hisses:

That’s Ada Byron, my dear!

And the eyes watch me then, tracking my progress as I circle in a quadrille, or talk with other young ladies of mundane matters. The fans flap faster; another woman leans in, with another tempting morsel to offer.

Oh, but I heard the most scandalous rumour – you’ll never guess...

And so it goes, from one drawing room to the next.

Why, that’s Ada Byron, you know...

Goodness! What do you suppose is the truth behind that extraordinary tale about young Ada Byron?

Do I imagine them, these whispers? I have too much imagination, I think, sometimes, and I can’t control it. Once I start imagining something, it’s hard to stop... my butterfly brain skitters with what-ifs, and to me those whispers are as loud and clear as racecourse announcements by the time I have finished imagining. I wonder, therefore, what the fresh-faced young men to whom I am introduced know, and what they are thinking, and whether they could possibly countenance an affiliation with the most vulgar woman in all England. I would like to share my anxieties with my mother, but it just doesn’t seem to be the kind of conversation that we could have together. I long for a friend, like Flora Davison, but she is not doing the Season.

I have no one in whom to confide, and for all that I am busier than I’ve ever been, I have never felt lonelier.

There is one kind of person, incidentally, who appears undeterred by malicious whispers, and that is a breed of gentleman known as The Fortune Hunter. Mamma holds forth on the subject one morning over breakfast, cautioning me to steer well clear of these objectionable types.

‘I don’t see how I am to avoid such people,’ I say. ‘You presented me at Court; you wanted me to have suitors.’

‘Yes, yes,’ says Mamma, tearing impatiently at a bread roll with her small teeth. She chews, swallows and goes on: ‘Suitors, yes. Fortune hunters, no.’

‘How on earth is anyone to tell the difference?’

At this, Mamma looks vague, and mutters something about ‘a particular gleam in the eye’. ‘My point is really this,’ she continues, liberally buttering another roll. ‘If you are a young woman of means, you need to marry a man of wealth so that you can be sure you are not being married for the sake of your money.’

‘What if he has money, but wants more?’

‘Ada, you are being extremely tiresome,’ says my mother. ‘You simply have to make the correct judgment; that is all.’

‘Is this how you felt when you were doing your London Seasons?’ I venture. ‘Was this a concern of your parents too?’

‘We are not talking of me,’ says my mother, in a conversation-closing tone of voice.

Rather rashly, I decide to press the point. ‘How did my father appear, when first you met him?’

There is no more butter to spread. Mamma lays the butter knife down so that it bisects the dish. I wait for her to change the subject, or else to return to hectoring me about fortune hunters and the like. Her hand slips, and the knife clatters to side of the dish. She retrieves it and holds it for a moment, tilting it so that it reflects shards of light. Then she says: ‘Hmm. I don’t know that I recall the precise moment of our meeting...’ The knife tilts again, and for some reason – one that I cannot fathom now, and perhaps never will – she appears to change her mind. ‘No, I do remember,’ she says. ‘It was at Lady Melbourne’s, at her house in Whitehall. Byron fairly turned the room inside out when he entered; he had a way of doing that, you know, even though he was lame in one leg and had a habit of holding onto the backs of bits of furniture, moving a little like a crab from place to place. Not a proud, bold stride into the centre of a room, as you might have expected. But he dressed quite exquisitely, and besides, he was famous. Really, extraordinarily famous. Musicians would lay down their bows. People would fall silent, just waiting to see what he would do or say.’

‘Were you in awe of him?’

‘I don’t know that “awe” would be the right word. I was... intrigued. Yes, that describes it well. We fell into conversation, although I don’t remember what we talked about. We met several times afterward, and then entered into a correspondence – a long one, of several years.’

This is more than she has ever told me. Far more. I risk one last question. ‘Did you ever fear that he was a fortune hunter?’

Mamma coughs; a bit of bread has slipped down the wrong way. At once, three solicitous waiters spring to her assistance and it is some time before she is recovered enough to speak. ‘Lord Byron,’ she hisses, wedging her napkin into a starched ball, ‘was never interested in my money.’

Later on, I find myself dwelling on this exchange, pressing at the edges of it, scanning for cracks. James Hopkins told me that my father was hugely in debt when he left for the Continent. Was he in debt before he married Mamma? And in which case, why did he remain so – since Mamma, I know, was then a woman of considerable means? Did money lie at the root of their troubles, or was there some other reason?

I have puzzled and puzzled for so long that every time I come up with a hypothesis, I struggle to reconcile what I know to be true with what I imagine to be possible. But my theory is that my mother’s behaviour while they were married was somehow so abhorrent to my father that he was forced to leave – first the marriage, and then the country. The debts must have figured too in the situation. But that is the best that I can come up with. (For all her flaws, I do not consider my mother capable of actually incurring debts.)

Yes, I think she tried to do all those things that she tries to do to me: to ‘trammel’ his mind; to curb his natural tendencies; to subject him to constant scrutiny, mindful of moral deviance. And if I, a young woman, find it almost too much to bear, then what must Lord Byron have thought? As a poet – a man for whom the flow of words must have been as crucial as lifeblood – he must surely have felt stifled by her indefatigable desire for control. How many times have I heard the word ‘reform’ upon my mother’s lips? My poor father: I can just picture her attempts to reform his nature – perhaps, each time he lifted a glass of wine to his lips, she urged him to set it down untasted... perhaps she proposed that he peruse one of her long religious tracts, in the hope that he would better himself... And, of course, the great tragedy would have been that there was nothing really so wrong about him or his character; it was simply that my mother likes so much to try and make people better.

Vainly, I try to imagine myself there: a mouse scuttling along the skirting-boards, witnessing that first conversation. What is Mamma like? I picture her serious face with its rosebud mouth and prim brows. Does she smile, laugh at his jokes? No: I think she asks him a question, a searching one. She is perfectly sombre, while he is all gaiety and light-hearted wit. Perhaps he is interested by that, by the fact that she, Anne Isabella Milbanke, is different. But what a distance from that point to a point of an actual proposal of marriage: honestly, it’s as absorbing as the trickiest of algebraic conundrums.

Sometimes, therefore, when I’m attending a party, it is not of myself that I am thinking at all. Nor am I thinking of whatever the bright-eyed, rouge-cheeked women might be muttering behind fanned fingers.

I think instead about my parents, and what they might have said to each other at those dances, nearly twenty years ago.