Lord Byron's Novel (18 page)

From: “Smith”
To: “Thea”
Subject: The Childe

I never thought I’d be doing this. I’m staying up at night trying to read Byron’s poetry. Georgiana happens to have a big volume of it, in this bookcase full of leather-bound books I don’t think she’s looked at much, if ever. I started in on his first big poem,
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,
the one that was such a huge and instant success that he “woke up and found himself famous,” or whatever it was. Well, it’s pretty funny. Read this (yeah I know, but read it). It’s a scene early on when Harold’s traveling in Spain and goes to a bullfight:

Now isn’t that
exactly
like those scenes in old cartoons set at bullfights, where Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck has to be a matador, and the door flies open and the bull comes out, with steam snorting from his nose, etc. etc.? Just like, right? The whole thing’s not all like this, but every now and then these—well
cartoons
pop up. Maybe since he was writing about things people didn’t know much about, it was like a vivid travelogue, and not corny. Maybe it’s good. He was only 23. But I can’t read much of it. My eyes drift closed. The print is very small. The page is very dark. It was a long time ago. I’m going to bed.

S

From: “Smith”
To: [email protected]
Subject: Ada Notes

Lee:

I am working through the notes that Ada made for the novel. I sent you some scanned pages. They’re very hard to read (esp. as digital files, maybe you gave up on them). I wonder if she was stoned part of the time. But I am trying to understand what the burned book might have been about. Here are some things I already know are (or were) supposedly in it, or important to it somehow. Albania. Greece. Scotland. Byron’s house at Newstead. Thomas Moore. A zombie (!). An Irish lord named Fitzgerald, who was a real person (?). The battle of Salamanca (Spain). The Duke of Wellington. Somebody named Frere (?). None of it makes much sense to me, but it wouldn’t, would it, without the book itself.

I don’t know why I’m obsessing on this. She spent a long time on it, and she was dying, and I feel like I could make it worth it. But if it’s gone I can’t, can I.

I will be sending you all the Ada notes as I transcribe them. Tell me if you learn anything from them.

S

From: “Smith”
To: “Lilith”
Subject: Process

Lilith—

I don’t think it’s exactly fair that you think I am not getting the job done that we decided on. I know the reports I promised you have not been what you expected to see, but I think that what’s really important is that I not do anything to harm the relationship that’s building here with Georgiana. She cc’d me the letter she sent you and you have to admit she’s still fully engaged in the process and considering the things she said about me personally in that letter I think I am doing the right things here to keep her focused and aware of the project and the project’s needs.

I understand that keeping the site moving along without me there is harder, but if you look at some of the old pages, like the Curie pages, you’ll see I’ve been cleaning up and making the changes on your bugs list. It’s not always easy to find a place to work now that I am in Georgiana’s house. The room is kind of small. She talks on the phone a lot, and she likes to wander around the house while she talks. But think of the money we’re saving, and I’m going to the London Museum of Science today and back to Oxford to the Lovelace papers again on Monday. And speaking of which, is there anybody in the office, is Caitlin still working, who could go look at something for me in the NY Public Library? They have a bunch of Ada stuff too.

Lilith, I really am trying to do what I can here to keep Georgiana feeling good about us and the project. We’re in a process. I can’t explain everything, but I have to ask you to just assume it’s for the best for a while longer. Eyes on the prize.

Love

Smith

From: “Thea”

To: “Smith”

Subject: math

well now you got me doing it im staying up late looking at this stuff you sent me its a bunch of nonsense as far as i can tell none of it makes any sense as mathematical tables

so i went and read about babbage and his stuff and i found out babbage and ada were also interested in statistics about which i know not a lot so now i go to the department to see if anybody can tell me anything i have to tell you its a little embarrassing but i dont care i guess anything for knowledge ily

t

From: “Smith”

To: [email protected]>

Subject: Leeches cc: “Thea Spann”

Lee—

One thing I found out—you can find out anything on the Web, really, it almost makes research irrelevant, or no fun, except that half of what you find out is bullshit—but one thing I found out is about Dr. Merryweather’s Tempest Prognosticator. That was the machine or “engine” that Ada went to see when her friend got a look at the manuscript. Maybe you thought that was some kind of joke, but there really was a Dr. Merryweather and he really did come up with a new machine for predicting sudden changes in what, the
weather,
all this is true. Here’s what he did: he had discovered that leeches, you know leeches, tend to become very agitated when there is a drop in barometric pressure. So he worked up a machine made of several glass jars, each with a leech inside, and tied to each little leech there was a silver chain—why silver? I don’t know—and the silver chains were attached to a bell at the top, very delicately balanced; and when the barometric pressure dropped, meaning a storm or bad weather coming, the leeches would wiggle furiously, and the silver chains would pull the bell, which would ring a warning. In the picture I found the jars were all cut-glass, and the thing looked like a big chandelier. That’s all.

S

From: [email protected]

To: “Smith”

Subject: RE:Leeches

Ah. And did you know that her mother—Byron’s wife—was addicted to leeches? She was constantly using them, applying them, being “bled.” She distrusted any doctor (and she saw a lot of doctors) who questioned the utility of leeches. She applied them to her forehead and temples for headache, other parts for other pains. Leeches! How is it that the world or history can visit these tiny sweet revenges on awful people, furnishing their lives with exquisite symbols (or metonymies might be the word) too obvious for any author to dare to use, but true.

She was bulimic too: isn’t that the term? Said she never ate, but actually liked to eat a lot—especially mutton—and then she’d have herself rowed a ways out to sea, and upchuck. AND she kept an “issue”—an open wound on her arm, which she somehow picked at or did something to keep from healing, to facilitate bleeding. And everyone—all her many friends, the general public, her son-in-law till (almost) the end, thought she was a paragon of virtue and self-denial.

May I ask who the Thea is you cc’d the leech machine to?

Lee

From: “Thea”

To: “Smith”

Subject: got it

okay okay i got it i got it

youre not gonna believe me but i got it and you didnt

we started working on it with the computer its first of all not statistics there is actually an algorithm that will tell you if a list of numbers is statistics its called benfords law and it predicts the frequency of digits in statistical data a big data set like this if it defies the predicted frequency curve its not statistics wow huh yeah i ws impressed then i started thinking and i got it you could get it in a second if you just think about it about ada and her dragon mom youd have done exactly this yourself what she did

so heres what you do you have to find a quiet room with a door you can lock and call me like you havent done and be sure its in the evening like about nine est and we can talk a long time and youll tell me stuff lots of stuff cause nitetime is the rite time and then if you are good I WILL TELL YOU THE SECRET BECAUSE I GOT IT

T

From: “Smith”

To: “Thea”

Subject: Morning After

Thea, what if it’s so? What if it’s really so and you’re right? If she really did that, put the whole book into a code and made it look like math stuff. I keep thinking about it and laughing because it’s so great, or it’s so stupid, I don’t know which. O Thea you amazing person.

God what a night, huh? How could I forget that nine at night where you are is 3 AM here. Oh well. Georgiana looked at me funny this morning like maybe she heard something.

But you never mind all that. You go break that code. If it is a code. You’ve got to break the code, and all by yourself, and in secret. And then afterward we’ll be famous. YOU’ll be famous. If we can get Georgiana to let us tell anybody.

S

From: “Smith”

To: [email protected]
Subject: News

Lee—Maybe news. Maybe the book’s not gone. Maybe.

Thea is my partner. In email you can’t see me choosing that word over a few others, but it’s the only one I want. And she’s wonderful, and she’s just done something wonderful, I think and hope. Maybe. I’ll let you know soon.

S

From: “Thea”

To: “Smith”
Subject: codes

not a code a cipher heres how it works you substitute letters for other letters according to some kind of rule one rule you can use is to start the cipher alphabet from a different letter than the plain text the plain text starts at a and goes to z the coded text starts at g and goes through z and on to f get it so the word cab comes out igh to break a cipher like that you need to run through all the possible letters from which the code alphabet starts until one starts making sense but then what you do to make it harder is you change the alphabet starting letter you do it according to some key you take a word for instance like lordbyron and you drop out the repeating letters and then add all the other letters after it to make a whole alphabet so you get this

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

ldbyronacefghijkmpqstuvwxz

get it then you use that alphabet and if somebody has the key they can figure it out but thats too simple becuz every letter in the text is represented by the same letter in the code every b is a d easy to break so there are other things you do you can make a table 26 letters square a to z on one axis a to z on the other and then you have 26 different alphabets starting from different letters and you take your ldbyron key and you use it to specify a different alphabet for each of the first 7 letters of the text and repeat for the next 7 when youre done the code was called a vigenere code here is the square you use the top row and the left column are the key row and column

so say the first word in your text is eerie first letter is e you read down from the e in the top key row to the same position in the l row and you have the letter p and then you do the same for the next letter of your text which is e again but this time using the next letter in ldbyron for your alphabet so you read down again from the e in the key row but this time to the d alphabet and you get h so see if you keep using the ldbyron key then identical letters in the text wont be enciphered with the same letter consistently they will be different not every time but often but anybody who knows the key can translate easily

get it i do not think you do but you know who figured out first how to break this hard code guess it was babbage

From: “Smith”

To: “Thea”

Subject: RE:codes

I do get the idea. Your letters would be easier if you would just punctuate, you know, Thea. But we’ve had that talk. So never mind. And btw ADA is using numbers not letters. Do you just translate? ABC = 123? If you do, then how do you know when the number for one letter ends and another begins? If you use 1 for A and 2 for B and 12 for L, how do you know 12 stands for L and not for AB? Just asking.