You do know that Lady Byron—Ada’s mother—with others, including Byron’s publisher John Murray, and his friend John Cam Hobhouse, and his friend and biographer Thomas Moore, all collaborated in burning the manuscript of Lord Byron’s memoirs, which she hadn’t read—in fact only Moore had. Technically they were the property of Augusta Leigh, the half sister; but Lady B. bullied her into agreeing; she’d already convinced Augusta that she was the greatest sinner who ever lived—no, second greatest, after Byron himself. And so the men gathered in John Murray’s rooms and together they burned a book by the man they professed to love, which only one of them had even read, supposedly for his sake: the worst piece of literary vandalism of the century, anyway the one I regret the most. All because Lady Byron feared that her husband would tell his side of the story of their marriage, and she would no longer control the spin.
I’ll tell you something. Ada’s story contains a monster parent, but it’s not her father—it’s her mother. There is no comparison I know of adequate to this woman but characters out of Gothic fiction. She isn’t a Romantic monster though but a Victorian one: a whited sepulchre, a soft-spoken self-controlled bombazine-clad mass of self-deception, self-righteousness, appalling mental cruelty passing under the name of religion, morality, “higher” feelings, and “pure” motives. She used her money to control people who depended on her, or who could be induced to accept her help, without ever admitting to herself she was doing so. She took dozens of people into her confidence about Byron’s supposed sins and enormities, each of whom thought she, or he, was the only one to be trusted with these secrets. It’s amazing the numbers of people she got to lie down in front of her and abase themselves. I’ll tell you something wonderful. She was intensely interested in education—all her kind was and is—and liked to set up punitive little schools where children of the deserving poor would have the latest theories practiced on them and were expected to show constant gratitude; but she was also interested in prison reform: she took up Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, one of the most astonishing combinations of social control and moral high-mindedness ever conceived. The Panopticon was a prison—maybe you know all this, it’s become a staple of social theory—which was arranged as a round tower, in which the individual cells were in an outside ring, able to be observed continuously from a central station. Guards could see the prisoners in their cells, but because of the way the place was lit, and through a system of blinds, the prisoners couldn’t see the guards; they knew they could be observed at any time, though not whether they were being observed right now, so they had to assume they were being observed all the time. They couldn’t communicate with or see any other prisoner, but the guards could see all of them all the time. It would be, Bentham thought, all that was needed to control them. Like God: always with his eye on you, himself invisible. Or as Edmund Burke said, who hated rationalistic schemes like this, a spider in its web. God’s eye, spider: you can see why Lady Byron liked the idea. It’s how she ran her life: each of her prisoners in his or her separate cell, her eye on all of them. And she ran it that way in order to punish crime, or sin: her husband’s, long before, unforgotten, unforgivable.
We’re not wrong. Ada says she’ll get William to certify the thing is burned. Almost up to the day of Ada’s death—when her awful soul cruelty finally alienated even him—William was enamored of Ada’s mother, and did everything he could to please her. Read The Late Lord Byron by Doris Langley Moore. Read it now. It’s heartbreaking.
Lee
From: “Smith”
To: “Thea”
Subject: Wrong
T
Okay that story I told you about Byron’s marriage isn’t quite right. In fact it’s all wrong. I got a book that Lee recommended. We’re dealing with the Wicked Witch of the West here. She’s so awful that you have to forgive her, nobody could be that awful who didn’t have some bent in their personality from somewhere. I don’t know where.
From: “Thea”
To: “Smith”
Subject: RE:Wrong
wrong about who ada byron mom byron all of them who is so awful
From: “Smith”
To: “Thea”
Subject: RE:Re:Wrong
Not Ada. Lady Byron, her mother. She spent her whole life after Byron justifying herself as the righteous one. She bent and corrupted everybody she loved (and I think she did love them in her way) to get them on her side. She had Ada from the beginning, and did all she could to keep her ignorant of her father until the time came to let her too in on the secret of his evil ways. What she feared more than anything was to lose Ada to him—not physically, but emotionally. I know what you’re thinking right now, Thea, but you know it’s really not so: my mom couldn’t plot against anybody or for anybody, not even herself, not even me.
You know the more I learn about Ada the less I think she actually accomplished, and the more I love her. I don’t think she was a Strong Woman. Her mother was the strong woman. She never did very much of all the things she thought she could do, and in the end it doesn’t matter what you want to do or think you can do, it only matters what you do do. And it doesn’t matter what you think about what you’ve done, only what it really is—man I know what that’s about, and you know I know it.
But I love her. It’s hard not to. For her vanity and her amazing hopes for herself, her visions of what was going to be possible in the future, which were so clear-sighted, and right, even though she had no way of proving them, and they were so different from those of the real scientists around her.
And for her craziness too. And for her awful suffering, and how brave she was. She was nuts. She reminds me of you.
From: “Thea”
To: “Smith”
Subject: go easy
Importance: Normal
reminds you of me why she doesnt remind me of me i think you are coming detached like a balloon lost from a kids wrist you know like i did that time in stanford sokay just write and tell me
t
From: “Smith”
To: “Thea”
Subject: RE:go easy
Importance: Normal
Actually she doesn’t remind me of you or anybody like you. I don’t know why I said that. Maybe she reminds me of me. When she was a little girl she invented a science called Flyology. They didn’t let her have any stories or fairy tales or poetry at all so that her natural tendency (supposedly) for mental aberration or craziness or whatever she was supposed to have inherited from her father wouldn’t develop. So instead of dreaming about that kind of stuff she dreamed about science. The Art of Flying. She studied the wings of dead birds to learn how they did it, and she set up a lab called the Flying Room, strung with ropes and pulleys and a “triangle” of some kind. She made plans and drawings and paper wings, and she wanted to build a flying horse powered by steam (she loved horses) with room inside for a driver or pilot, and she would become like a carrier pigeon, delivering and collecting her mother’s endless mail. For a while she signed her letters Annabella Carrier Pigeon. Why does it make me want to cry?
I just think about you. Studying math when nobody wanted you to and you didn’t care. But maybe you did care and did it anyway. Thea I love you. Right now I just want so much to put my head in the crook of your neck and cry, I wish I knew why but it doesn’t matter.
Smith
From: “Thea”
To: “Smith”
Subject: cry
you want to put your head in the crook of where jeez dont
cry you know what happens to me then
she reminds you of you becuz you had a father who was kept out of your life for a good reason and something about him couldnt be talked about but should have been i see that now it should have been
okay im here and i will be so but what if you come all the way back and i turn out to be just me again like before sthat going to be cool i hope cuz im all i got
t
• FIVE •
In which all hopes are dashed, and all love lost
THE CHOICE OF WHICH University Ali would attend to complete his education was made almost without thought, and this account needs pay no more attention to the progress of Ali’s studies in that Athens upon the Fens than he himself did—or better say than does the average well-born undergraduate, for indeed Ali found an occasional delight in learning that he had not known at Ida—tho’ he had there sometimes excelled in the arts of rote memorization and the getting of things ‘by heart’, a process whereby the heart is commonly bypassed entirely—just where such unloved and unforgotten things are stor’d ever after I profess I know not. Among his fellows at University he was not known solely for his odd habit of now and again looking into an ancient or a modern Author—but certainly it was remarked upon in some wonderment.
In the other common course of study engaged in by the bloods, Ali was not behindhand, when once set upon a path previously unfamiliar to him. ’Tis said that a term in Prison will tend to harm a man’s character, because of the Company he will commonly find himself in, and the conversation there provided, and the subjects touched upon; he may come out a better Criminal than he went in. The same may be said of those who attend our Universities, or at least of those who come there not already corrupt, and only ready to continue. Ali soon learned the arts of opening Bottles, and tossing away the Corks; of awaking in rooms not his own, after adventures unremembered; of being the sole support of young women residing with aged female protectors in the neighbourhood, and in want of Charity in every sense. His greatest disability in these pursuits, in particular the last-named, was a violence of feeling which would, without his willing it, become concentrated, rather than spread abroad, where it would do him little harm—he felt he could lose the world for what he now found it contained, and in his single-mindedness (the opposite, in a sense, of Libertinism) he ran the constant risk of fixation, a condition his fellows noted in awe and mockery, the Objects of it being considered.
Then he might ride out, after too great and long carousing with companions who in fact cared little for him (and those were of both sexes), to a quiet place, a still pool of the serpentine stream that crossed the grounds—and there purge his sullied soul in cold water—and only then allow himself to think upon Susanna, far away, and of her brother, of whom he heard little—for the pen was by now as unfamiliar to that young Lord’s hand as the sword or the gun were companionate. But a lapse came also in Susanna’s communications, which wounded at first, till it was forgotten in the course of Ali’s new and absorbing preoccupations—in the throes of which, thoughts of such a one as Susanna were indeed unwanted, and best kept at bay. When at length a missive in her hand was delivered to him, he felt before opening it the shock of a reproach, for his forgetfulness at the least.
‘My dearest Ali,’ began this letter. ‘As you have shown, by so many kind words and acts, your feelings towards my brother and myself, and (I hope) towards my family as well, I write to tell you of our fortunes, and what times we have fallen upon—I hope it will not wound your most gentle nature to hear—tho’ it is the fear thereof, I think, that has kept me thus far from writing to you. O dear—I see there is nothing but preamble here, and it is likely you are already searching the page for the news I wish to give. I must tell you that Corydon Hall is let, to a Banker desiring to try being a Landlord, and upon terms I do not pretend wholly to understand. My dear brother might have been able to forestall this, or to strike a better, or a safer bargain for our dear home than my poor mother and I could have done, but he is far from home. O my dear Friend you know so little, I see I must start farther upstream of these tidings if you are to see our fates whole.—To begin with him whom we both hold so much in our hearts: My brother having joined the Regiment to which all his friends and mentors urged him, had every reason to expect a posting nearby, so that he could continue in that double service—that triple service, I should say, of son, brother, and head of House, as well as doing his military duty—for there were several among his officers, and above them in those Offices of government concerned in Army matters—do not ask me to explicate—who knew our story, and who desired to aid us. So it fell out, for a time—but then—and I know not how, nor could he discern the reason—that former understanding vanished. His regiment having been ordered to the Peninsula, he apply’d to those Offices where he had formerly received aid, but now found all changed. He asked that he might be exempted from the general orders—that the hardship to us and to his young brothers might be considered—but he found no one to listen—doors once open were now shut—those who had before been kind were not at home, or otherwise engaged—and appeals fell on deaf ears. So he is gone, my dear Ali—the light and warmth of our Sun and yours, is set in the South—and yet we remaining are determined to do our Duty as he does his. And in what does our Duty consist?—Well—in Pleasure, it seems, now—at least what the 1500 inhabitants of hot rooms (I mean Society) deem Pleasure—I must say that it seems as laborious to me, and to cause daily as great anguish to those engaged in it, as if they dug a Ditch, or cleansed a Stable.——I mean to say, plainly, that my Mother and I have taken a small house in Bath for the season, and each day we sally forth, to see, and to be seen—O my dear Friend let me not dwell on the particulars of a pursuit whose purposes must be evident to you, if you but consider our condition—mine, and my House’s—for my House is mine to preserve, as much as it is anyone’s. I hope that your opinion of me may remain unaltered by what Necessity impels me to—tho’ I fear it may not.—Remember only that I hold you in as high regard as ever I did, and will continue to do, no matter what befalls. And who knows—I am my Father’s daughter—I will believe that something may turn up as he was wont to say, and change our case for the better.’
She closed this letter with the tenderest of compliments, and beneath these a post-scriptum that struck like a knife into Ali’s vitals: ‘I know not how it may be, nor what it portends, but the name of Lord Sane was more than once mentioned, in connexion with my brother’s appeals, and as well in the application of our Banker to take the lease of our home. Is not this curious?’
Lord Sane! No more than Susanna could Ali know what his father’s name, insinuated like the worm in the bud into the affairs of the Corydons, might mean, if indeed it meant aught of consequence: but it kept his hand from the response it should make. For many days he bethought him—began a reply, tore it up—tormented himself, castigated himself for a fool—but still could make no answer. For he had, he saw, nothing but words—which, having nothing behind them, were as useless as so much sand. Take heart, he wrote; or, I will never abandon thee; or, My heart as my hand is for ever thine—and then he would crush these helpless sentiments, which indeed made him no resistance, and toss them into the fire. After long enough, he grew desperate, and—risking Rustication or expulsion—he took horse and left the University, meaning to cross the country and offer her—what? At each station where he stopped along the road he asked himself. What had he to offer? A loyal heart and a willing hand are invaluable things—and much wanted in this world—yet there are species of trouble that they are impotent to battle. Half-way through his journey, having defeated himself, Ali turned back, and took the same road the other way. In his lodgings once again, he contented himself with a written reply—and yet he was not content. He received no further letters from Susanna, indeed so many weeks passed that he became certain there would be none, that his ineffectuality deserved none—and he was on the point of departing from the University at term’s end when a further
letter came from Bath.
‘My dearest Ali,’ Susanna’s missive once again began, and a hot shame flew over him to see this salutation, so that for a moment he could read no further. ‘It happens some times, does it not, that the dreadfullest griefs come when Happiness seems nearest, or is even upon us—and so it seems for me. I know not how I may write to you what I must, except to state it plainly—tho’ I thought I should die immediately when it was stated so to me. Ali—my brother Corydon is dead. No sooner had he reached the Tagus, and before he could be of any service to King or country, he took a fever—the same that destroys so many of our Soldiers who enter that land—that cursed land—No! Let me not complain, let me be patient to endure this, or I shall surely die of it! He is gone—we will not see him more—and I am half of what I was, and a half alone can hardly survive. I can only hope that my own changed state—for it is soon to change—will in part bring some little forgetfulness, tho’ only briefly. For this is the Happiness of which I spoke—I am to be married. And surely it is happiness—it is always described so—and I am assured that tho’ the prospect may not fill me with delightful anticipation, yet certainly the state itself may satisfy, indeed must—there is no alternative. The gentleman to whom I have given my hand is that same gentleman who has occupied Corydon Hall these months—one whose name you may know—’ And here, in the near-blindness of his tears, Ali discerned the name of one whom indeed he knew—an aged man—the father of a scholar in his own College, one with whom Ali had once got drunk—a widower, one wife already buried—and one whom Ali had met in Lord Sane’s company in London upon the time when he had first been carried through that City. Rich he indeed was, though without rank or property—which Susanna would supply! With grief changing to despair, Ali read on: ‘O my dearest, dearest Ali!’ Susanna concluded. ‘When you think of me, consider—if it be not in your heart immediately to understand—the grief of my poor mother, and the situation of my young brothers, without guidance, without a model upon which to mould themselves! I wish above all that you retain your memories of me as I was—as we were—before this Gulph opened—on whose nether side I now stand. And yet your hand, and your voice, seem even now not far but near. I am in want of your good wishes—your best thoughts—your prayers, even, if ever you make such—and your dear and constant Friendship, which I will believe I ever have—ever—in the Path I now shall tread!’