Piccadilly, London
September 1833

I am attending a dance – another one; I have gone to so many that I have lost count of them – and since there does not seem to be anyone interesting to talk to here, I have slipped away from the crowd in search of silence. I try various rooms on the ground floor of the house in Piccadilly – it belongs to a distant friend of my mother’s – before settling on a deserted drawing room. The fire is unlit, and the room is cold; wishing I had a shawl, I wander around the room, looking for something to occupy my thoughts. The sound of a waltz echoes faintly from another part of the house.

The walls are hung with woven silks in delicate floral patterns of red and blue. Once, a year ago, I might not even have noticed the wall-hangings. But now, every time I see a richly-embroidered silk or piece of brocaded upholstery, the same thing happens: I don’t just see the fabric itself, and the workmanship; I see the machine that was used so successfully in its working, and then, without fail, think of the designer of that machine. I imagine him as a child (for it is always a man), and try to guess at his habits, his childish games and whims.

What was it about Joseph Marie Jacquard – the peculiar balance of brilliance – that made him come up with his loom? I think he must have been a good mathematician. To envisage a system in which punched cards can inform a visual design requires a mind that understands complex calculations. But he wasn’t just a mathematician; he also understood fabric, which seems the opposite of mathematical, somehow, all soft waves and gentle folds. I wonder if it was the combination of those things that provided the magical formula for his creation. Could have there been something more, besides?

And then there’s Mr Babbage, who longs to have the wherewithal to make his Difference Engine a reality. On the night I saw it, I was unable to sleep for thinking about it, and now, three months later, I am thinking about it still. I would like very much to see it again. I have asked Mamma if she might write to Mr Babbage, but she has not done so. I believe that she did not quite appreciate what the machine represented: yes, it can count mechanically, but more than this, it shows that we can use machinery to further scientific pursuits in ways that hithertofore we have perhaps only dreamed about.

In other words: if Mr Babbage can design a machine that can perform accurate calculations by means of the finite order of differences, then what else can be designed? What else can be done?

I imagine Mr Babbage as a young boy, nudging beads on an abacus into ever-more-intricate configurations, puzzling at their potential, testing their limits. What do they have in common, Mr Babbage and Mr Jacquard? There must be something... something that is not explained by mere intellect, or deep knowledge... I puzzle and puzzle over it, before I think that I begin to see. It is the ability to look beyond the scope of what is currently possible, as though diving into deep water and opening one’s eyes, ready to take in all the wonder of the ocean floor. It is the ability to connect two ideas together – two ideas that might, on the surface, have little to do with each other, but somehow can be partnered in a way that conjures magic. It’s similar, really, to what a good writer, a good poet, can do with a metaphor.

It’s the letter I again, I realise, weaving its charms: idea, inspiration, impression, imagination... the words light up like stars in the shadowy room. Invention too. And insight.

If all words were stricken from the dictionary but those, I wouldn’t mind, for as long as we still have ideas, we will flourish.

It seems to me now that we are living in an Age of Ideas. I’ve heard it called a Mechanical Age, and that’s no doubt true, but before the machines – and there are many – came the ideas that sparked their design. Whenever I think of any new marvel of design – the steam train, the sewing machine, the dynamo – I think also of the mind that made it. Take, for example, the Jacquard loom. When I first saw it at the Adelaide with Mary Montgomery, it imprinted itself on me with the ferocity of white-hot iron. The loom changed things for me, in a way that I wasn’t quite aware of at the time, since I was fairly absorbed in my affair of the heart (or whatever it was; certainly, there were body parts involved) when we first went to the Gallery of Practical Science.

And then, as I think about all this, as befits an I-loving Ada, I think also of me. Is it so wrong, so swollen-headed and presumptuous of me, to hope that one day I might be able to design something to rival those machines?

I dream of it.

But I am under no illusions about the fact that if I am ever to achieve anything of the magnitude of a loom, or an engine, then I must work hard. And I must have further instruction. Understandably, perhaps, my mother has not appointed any new tutors for me lately. I correspond with Dr King, and sometimes with Arabella Lawrence and with Dr Frend, and have to content myself with their guidance from afar, but I want to learn different things. I am ready to learn them.

I tell myself that I will know my new teacher when I meet him.

I am just thinking rather fondly of this moment – hoping that it will come sooner rather than later – when I hear someone enter the room. I look around, startled, to see a tall young man with a thatch of golden hair – really absurdly golden, as though he is auditioning for the role of Apollo – smiling at me.

‘Oh,’ he says softly. ‘I didn’t realise that there was anyone in here.’

I bow my head politely. ‘I’m afraid I’m hiding,’ I say.

‘You don’t care to dance?’

‘Not always. It depends on my mood, I suppose,’ I say.

‘Mine also.’ He introduces himself. ‘My name is Charles Knight,’ he says, with a low bow.

‘Ada Byron.’

He smiles; I realise he knows who I am, just as most people seem to know who I am. ‘Would you care to return to the party? We needn’t dance,’ he adds.

I agree to this – after all, why not? I can’t hide from potential suitors for ever – and take his arm, realising with a strange jolt that this is the first proper touch that I have engaged in (dancing not included) since the time of James Hopkins. I can’t resist a comparison between the two. This man is older than Mr Hopkins, and taller, and more confident in himself, for I realise now that James Hopkins was not really a very confident person. He was, for example, far more intimidated by Mamma than I wanted him to be. Does this Mr Knight know everything about me? I wonder. Has he read my father’s poetry? Did he ever hear the rumour – the one that Mamma sought so desperately to suppress? Does he...

I wish that my Ada-brain would, occasionally, turn itself off.

We arrive in time for a quadrille, and some tacit agreement passes between us that we may as well join in. As we dance, Mr Knight talks about himself. He is passionate, he tells me, about the railways. ‘I am keen to invest in them,’ he says. ‘To me, the advent of railway travel is the most significant development of our modern era.’

This kind of talk pleases me, and as the dance progresses in its decorous way we discuss all manner of new developments. We move, after a time, from steam engines to engines of other kinds. I describe to him Mr Babbage’s new machine, and he is all astonishment and interest; at the end of the dance, again by some kind of unspoken mutual agreement, we drift over to the refreshments table and continue to talk.

‘To hear you speak so eloquently of the workings of this engine is most delightful,’ says Mr Knight.

‘I only hope that Mr Babbage will secure the required funding to be able to build it,’ I say.

‘Has the government given him much?’

‘A good deal, I believe – some nine thousand in grants, to say nothing of the costs of the machinist.’

‘Nine thousand! Why, you could build a battleship with that,’ says Mr Knight.

‘He has been plagued with other difficulties besides money.’

Mr Knight smiles ruefully. ‘Ah, yes. It’s odd, isn’t it, how the most generous provision is never enough. Perhaps your mother will take an interest in the project?’

At this moment, I actually see Mamma on the other side of the ballroom. As usual, she is eating something – I never knew anyone with a more insatiable appetite than hers – and dabbing at the corner of her mouth with a napkin. ‘Mamma? Oh, she is indeed very interested,’ I say. ‘It was she who took me to meet Mr Babbage, earlier this year.’

‘Lady Noel Byron is well-known for her intellect,’ replies Mr Knight. He smiles again, broadly, easily. We look at each other. I am quite attracted to him – it’s the air of self-assurance, I think, and that Apollonian demeanour. Mr Knight goes on: ‘And – who knows? Perhaps Mr Babbage will also find in her a benefactress.’

Mamma hasn’t seen me yet, and I can’t resist allowing the conversation to go on a little longer. It is a delicious feeling – I think, for some reason, of the Cooking with Gas demonstration I once witnessed at the Adelaide with Mary Montgomery. Those flames that danced so enticingly as they roasted the pigeon. Now I imagine twirling a lazy forefinger ever closer to those flames, daring them to scorch my skin.

‘I would be most pleased to see you again, Miss Byron,’ says Mr Knight.

I, Ada, have attended enough soirées in my first Season to be well able now to spot the sort of man who would steal from church altars if he thought nobody was watching. Such a man, without doubt, is Mr Knight. There is indeed a twinkle in his eye that is quite impossible to miss: glassy, leering, what Mamma described once as ‘a particular gleam’. There have been other clues: his mentioning of my mother’s money, several times, in a talk that has only lasted about twenty minutes; the fact that he sought me out in an empty room, pretending that it was a chance meeting.

It is time to extract myself from an encounter that I have been prolonging solely for my own amusement.

‘Well,’ I say. ‘I—’

‘Ada.’

It’s quite incredible how much weight Mamma can get into two syllables, sometimes. I turn around, and there she is.

I am very used to being stared at by my mother at dances, and very able to translate her range of expressions. There’s the mildly approving smile when I am ‘behaving myself’ and speaking to the right kind of person. There’s the slanted left brow and pursed lips when there is some aspect of my being that is in want of improvement. And there’s the other look – which manages to be both curiously blank and full to bursting-point of emotion at the same time – that is currently crossing her face. That look tells me this: Mamma does not like Mr Knight.

She extracts me, with as much vigour and flapping of hen-like wings as the Furies used to show in their days of constant vigil at Fordhook. Once we are safely out of earshot of my gold-headed interlocutor, she says: ‘Ada, I expected better of you.’

‘What is wrong with Mr Knight?’ I say innocently. ‘I realise the man has no title, but—’

‘The man is a renowned fortune hunter. Not to be trusted.’

‘Oh, Mamma, I am sorry,’ I say, feigning contrition. ‘I hadn’t any idea.’

‘That,’ says Mamma, ‘is a great shame. As I said, Ada, I expected better of you.’