Buxton, Derbyshire
August 1834

The last morning in Buxton brings a letter from Mary Somerville. My heart leaps at the sight of her writing – but it’s Mamma’s name, not mine, on the folded writing paper. Over honey cakes and butter-rich brioches (the hotel breakfasts are awfully good) I wait for Mamma to finish reading the letter, and then ask her what the letter contains.

‘I entrusted to her a certain undertaking,’ says Mamma. ‘She writes to let me know that she is doing all she can.’

Almost as cryptic as my dream of my father. ‘That sounds intriguing,’ I say.

Mamma elucidates: ‘She is giving great consideration to the matter of a suitable husband.’

‘For Martha?’ I ask, referring to one of Mrs Somerville’s daughters, but knowing that this is most probably not the case.

‘No, you little goose!’ Mamma smiles at me. ‘For you.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Of course.’

Something heavy lodges itself in my chest, like a cherry stone trapped between the tines of a fork. We have been so busy travelling from place to place, viewing cotton mills one day and ribbon factories the next, staying in hotels and with friends, that I had more or less forgotten something that Mamma would never forget: that I am supposed, eventually, to find a husband.

It pains me to think that Mary Somerville, the most learned woman of my acquaintance, should be giving so much thought to my matrimonial prospects; I would much rather that we talked of geology and astronomy than marriage. Besides, the whole affair seems to me to be quite futile. No one is suitable enough for my mother. Either they are like Mr Knight, falling into the despised category of Renowned Fortune Hunter, or else they might be respectable enough in terms of character, but devoid of title. Or else they have a title, but not the right kind of title; or else they have the right kind of title but not enough money... Another type of man might on paper be quite perfect – but he is always the sort who is demonstrably disinterested in me, whether because of those rumours from a year ago, or else for some other reason entirely.

And sometimes there is nothing wrong with them at all – they seem in possession of all the required attributes – but Mamma simply decides, with all the single-mindedness of an obstinate child, that she doesn’t like them.

It really does seem a hopeless business, and I tell Mamma as much.

‘What, then, will you do with yourself, if you do not marry?’ she says.

I pause, wondering what to say. Lately, I have been thinking rather a lot about what is possible if you are a young woman. My work with Mary Somerville – of whom there is an actual bust on display at the Royal Society, although it is a place that she is not allowed to enter, because she is a woman – sparked a certain amount of this thinking. Girls are simply not educated in the same way as boys; yes, we have tutors, or governesses – or we might, if we have parents who encourage such things, and have the means to secure them – but we do not go to school as boys do. We cannot go to university.

This has been weighing on my mind ever since my presentation at Court; if I were a boy (hard to imagine, but one can try), I would probably be thinking of going to university now, rather than hovering at the edges of dances and waiting to meet my husband. Without doubt, I would choose Trinity College, Cambridge – a place I’ve never seen, and so I can only imagine a palace-like configuration of turrets and pillars and walkways and courtyards. Trinity was where my father went, and where Mr Babbage went too. Mary Somerville and I have talked about it often – how Babbage made the acquaintance there of William Whewell and John Herschel, with whom he still corresponds most fruitfully today. What an extraordinary place it must be, with so many minds meeting, so many books to be read, so many ideas to be exchanged over a hearty breakfast... It was at Cambridge, I know, that Babbage decided that the old system of mathematical notation needed to be abandoned in favour of the newer, and more useful, continental method. I often think: if only Mary Somerville had been able to attend such an institution, rather than rely on the goodwill of her husband to permit her to study, what wonders that lady would have achieved!

Even Mamma, I realise, who has an excellent brain, would have done well there. I admire her educational establishments a good deal, and sometimes I do not give her enough credit for her own forward thinking. She is capable of it.

‘If I could,’ I say, ‘I would go to university. I know that I cannot’ – I go on hastily, for Mamma has opened her mouth to protest at the absurdity – ‘but it does seem unfair, all the same.’

She does not protest, merely smiling at the edges of her mouth. ‘Yes, Ada. I do perceive that it seems unfair.’

Still wanting to answer her question – as much for me, indeed, as for her – I think on, worrying a brioche into a puddle of crumbs as I do so. I could propose to become a governess; or a traveller, perhaps, like Mariana Starke, whose guide-book we used for our Grand Tour. I could be a harpist – although that might be a rather hubristic thought, at this early stage in my musical career...

Then there’s my old ambition to become a writer. I haven’t written many verses lately, or any stories either, but that isn’t to say that I couldn’t write if I wanted to... I always thought that I gave up on that particular dream too quickly. My father wrote; a little part of me constantly wonders whether I should do the same. But then again, there are aspects of myself that I know I have inherited from Mamma, such as my aptitude for mathematics. I do like mathematics so much; perhaps, if one were to combine it with writing in some way...

‘I could write books,’ I say, ‘like Mrs Somerville.’

‘You haven’t the patience,’ says Mamma flatly.

‘I am learning patience!’ I say, feeling wounded. She has no idea of the patience required when trying to address the mathematical knots that two young children can tie themselves into.

‘What would you write about? Little romances, perhaps, such as you used to compose?’

I don’t like her tone as she says this, although I don’t know if she means to be unkind. I am remembering my dream again. You are all kinds of things... There is more than one kind of poetical...

It all comes together with the beauty of two magnets of opposite poles slotting into place. For so long, I have thought about writing; from early attempts at my own little verses with Miss Lamont, to stories with Miss Stamp and the fervent rereading of Lord Byron’s poems... then, later, the realisation, thanks to James Hopkins’ tutelage, that writing is not only about beautiful words and the pictures those words can paint, but, as he said, about the communication of ideas. Now it transfixes me (the idea coming upon me like a whirlwind of light and harmonious sound): I must write about ideas – scientific ideas! In journals, most likely, or... or even in books... It would need a special name, this kind of writing: something to capture the essence of such a craft.

A moment later, I think of it.

‘Poetical science,’ I say.

‘Ada, there is no such term.’

‘But there could be!’ My whole body is alert now; my hand shakes as I move my glass of milk away, lest I knock it over with my gestures. ‘Mamma, I must explain... I mean... it’s like... spiders’ webs and rainbows.’

She is looking at me now with concern.

‘I mean the transference of one idea to another,’ I say. ‘I mean connecting two different ideas in the way that a spider might spin thread across a garden... I mean the way that a rainbow looks quite different to the human eye – which I believe to be at the centre of its entire circle – to how it would appear elsewhere...’

‘Lower your voice, Ada, please. People are staring.’

She is right: my voice has risen, out of my control, and at least two neighbouring tables have paused their own conversations to look over at Lady Noel Byron and her daughter. I stop, and force myself to drink some milk, just for the normalcy of the action.

‘I’m sorry, Mamma,’ I say, expecting the conversation to end there. Privately, I resolve to continue the discussion of poetical science with Mary Somerville. I am sure that she will understand, even if Mamma does not.

Then Mamma says something entirely unexpected. ‘You ought not to set too much store by writing books,’ she says.

‘Why... what do you mean?’

‘I wrote to Mr Murray, your father’s publisher – oh, a long time ago, now – and gave him very specific instructions that on no account was he ever to publish anything written by you.’

This is a shock – and also not a shock – because here, as I have always known, is a woman who must be in control of everything. But even so, I am stupefied. ‘Mamma,’ I say, struggling to keep my temper, ‘why ever shouldn’t Mr Murray publish my books?’

‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ she says inscrutably.

We are interrupted then by a waiter who comes with assiduous grace to clear our plates, and I bury the feeling that has risen unceremoniously in my throat – the hot, hasty, agonised-anger feeling that I so often associate these days with exchanges with Mamma. Our conversation passes to other matters, such as what each of us proposes to do this morning, but this latest revelation – proof, if ever proof were required, of her controlling, calculating nature – is one that I shall not be able to forget.