Buxton, Derbyshire
August 1834

A few days later, I discover a harp in a dusty corner of the hotel’s music room. It doesn’t seem to belong to anyone, so I sit down with it for a half-hour or so, exploring the sounds that it makes, though I don’t know how to use the pedals. It’s an old harp, not very well cared for. But there’s something about it that attracts me – a romance. I like the way the grain of the curved wood feels in my hands. The harp has magical potential; I’m sure of it. Beauty could be coaxed from it, like pearls from oysters, if only one knew how to play...

A poem comes into my head; one of my father’s. It begins like this:

The Harp the Monarch Minstrel swept

The King of men, the loved of Heaven!

Which Music hallow’d while she wept

O’er tones her heart of hearts had given—

Redoubled be her tears, its chords are riven!

I do not know all my father’s verses perfectly, but near-enough, and I recite this one now, for the benefit of no one. I have never forgotten that he wanted me to be musical.

The web-like glitter of an idea holds me suddenly captive: I, Ada, will become a harpist.

Another passion is ignited, just so: I ask Mamma to find me a harp teacher and she obliges at once (pleased, no doubt, that I have transferred my thoughts from Babbage and his designs). Before long, I am working with a Miss Smith for an hour each morning, and then practising alone for a further hour each afternoon. I train myself to sit correctly on the low chair, positioning myself with all the elegance of a dancer; I stretch out each hand to the strings, plucking at them with a precision that reminds me so much of the way I worked so hard, once upon a time, at my shorthand. I make progress; Miss Smith is pleased, and so is Mamma. I learn scales, and then songs; after a week, I find that if I concentrate very carefully, I can sing and play at the same time: an achievement I never thought that I would master.

The semi-somnolent Buxton days acquire shape and purpose; and I realise that I am quite content. Arithmetic lessons with Bella and Livvy form a pleasant portion of each morning, before my own lesson on the harp with Miss Smith. It’s an arrangement that suits everyone, and although it is hard to be consistently patient – with the girls, and with myself – I find that with practice I am able to be far more patient than I have ever been before.

I listen to Livvy and Bella’s pretty, lisping voices as they recite their multiplication tables; I work out which sums and operations each girl finds particularly hard, and make a point of helping with those problems especially. I teach them to use a ruler properly.

‘General William Pasley first wrote this book to help engineers,’ I explain to them as I open that good soldier’s treatise, Practical Geometry Method. ‘Just think, Livvy and Bella – if you study hard, you could use your knowledge to build bridges, or railways... or even in warfare!’

Bella wrinkles her freckled nose. ‘Ada, how could you suggest that?’

‘Why would we want to do any of those things?’ chimes in Livvy.

‘Well,’ I counter, ‘why wouldn’t you?’

More nose-wrinkling and feminine disgust. I can see that they are, in spite of their protestations, rather amused that I have suggested these outrageous possibilities. ‘Because we’re girls,’ they chorus.

I am only teasing them, but the thought lingers, long after the lesson is over. Why should we women limit ourselves, simply because of our sex? Why should we say: this is not for us, nor this, nor this... when there are so many things that could be done? If Jacquard had been brought up to believe that he was not capable of designing a loom that would revolutionise the factory system; if Stephenson had never dared to dream of steam engines; if Babbage hadn’t broken things apart under the benevolent eye of his mother to see how they worked... then none of those inventions would exist today. (Mamma may have warned me against spending too much time considering Mr Babbage’s work, but I have just read an article about the Difference Engine in the Edinburgh Review by a Mr Lardner, who feels very much as I do: that the Difference Engine has much to offer everyone.)

The thought sparks oddities in my Ada-brain: all the magical potential that would have gone to waste, and all the magical potential that must, surely, be lost every day because little girls like Bella and Livvy Gosford do not believe that a bridge would be theirs to build.

One night I have a curious dream: I am playing the harp on a lonely beach covered in round white stones, a little like soup plates. The sky is purple and swollen, as though rain is about to fall. The weather doesn’t deter me, though, and I play on, even as the rain comes down, soaking through my clothes. Never have I summoned such exquisite music from the strings; it is almost worthy of the angels themselves. The rain gets heavier and heavier, blanketing the beach, and then, suddenly, it stops, and the sun tiptoes out.

I become aware of an audience – someone is watching me, from just over a sand dune (although, this being a dream, it is not covered in sand but rather those round, white stones). My fingers falter; I lift my hands from the instrument and look up as the visitor draws near. He is only a shadow at first; then, as he comes closer, and a rainbow suddenly illuminates that strange, stone-strewn beach, I see who he is. He is dressed the same as in Thomas Phillips’ portrait – the one that is always hidden behind the green curtain. He looks a little older, but not much.

‘Father,’ I say.

‘Little Ada,’ he says. He reaches out a hand and touches my chin – a gesture that copies precisely that of Aunt Augusta, a year or so ago, when I saw her in the street. ‘Can it really be you?’

‘I am musical, you know,’ I tell him. (Of all the things to say to my father, I don’t know why this is the first thing I choose, but, as I have explained, it is a dream.)

‘So you are.’

‘You wanted me to be musical.’

‘I wanted you to be all kinds of things. And you are all kinds of things.’

‘Why did you not want me to turn out poetical?’ I say.

It is one of those dreams in which I really do know that I am dreaming. Even so, I am deeply immersed in it, wanting it never to end. But at the same time, I am very near to waking, and I know this too.

‘There is more than one kind of poetical, Ada.’

‘What... what does that mean?’

‘There is more than one kind of bridge too. Remember that.’

‘But I—’

‘I must away, Ada. They’re waiting for me on the other side of the lake.’

‘Father, please...’

But he is fading as he walks away, lighter and more translucent with every step, and before long he is gone, before I can say anything else. I am alone again on the flat white beach. I look for the harp; it has fallen on its side, and I kneel down next to it.

The harp is no longer a harp, I see, but a Jacquard loom.