Charting the progress of Ada Lovelace’s secretive relationship with John Crosse is not easy. One fact stands out. Following that first husbandless stay at Fyne Court in November 1844, the countess began to carve out a more independent life for herself. At the end of August 1845, after spending three weeks with her mother at a village house in Kirkby Mallory (the main Noel home had been rented out on a long lease to a widowed Lady de Clifford), the countess retreated to Brighton where – as her husband teased her – she lived in such privacy that not even the notoriously inquisitive Mrs Jameson could find her. Lovelace’s prophecy proved correct; Anna Jameson left Brighton at the end of the summer in a state of perfect ignorance about Ada’s whereabouts.
Writing to Woronzow Greig from the partially completed Horsley Towers on 24 November 1845, Ada boasted of the ‘positive’ and ‘conclusive proofs’ she had received at Brighton that her incognito was successful. Plans were being hatched for a new way of life and they were not only driven by a sick woman’s need for seclusion and Brighton’s bracing air. By the following summer, Ada had persuaded her unsuspicious mother to subsidise the furnishing of a permanent pied-à-terre in Brighton’s Russell Square, one of the smartest areas in town. (Annabella’s untypical lack of interest in her daughter’s activities was due to the fact that she was preoccupied by innumerable philanthropic and educational enterprises, both in England and America.)
Of all Ada’s letters to her mother, the one that she wrote to the preoccupied Lady Byron from Brighton on 8 July 1846 was the most affectionate. She began by apologising for the expense of the Russell Square furniture, pointing out that it had been of the simplest kind, ‘much of it being only such as is used in servants’ rooms’. What mattered was that she now possessed a first little home of her own, a cosy nest to which she could retreat. Ada’s elated tone makes it tempting to assume that John Crosse had become a regular visitor to Russell Square.
‘This life, backwards & forwards, between home & here, suits me delightfully,’ Ada informed her mother, in full underlining mode.
I return home con gusto always. – Much of the comfort I am now enjoying I owe to you, – & I feel so grateful for it, – that I do not well know how to say so adequately! I think of it often . . . Every night & every morning I go to sleep thinking ‘I owe my comfort to the Hen!’
And how – whether in Brighton or elsewhere – did the illicit couple pass their stolen hours? If we can trust Ada’s own testimony, the answer is touchingly innocuous. Back in 1844, following her first visit to Fyne Court, a relieved Lady Lovelace told Andrew Crosse that she had discovered in her own pocket the little gold pencil that she had been so very anxious not to have left behind at his home. Drawing up her will eight years later, Ada carefully specified that Mr John Crosse was to receive the instruments contained in her gold writing case, and to make use of them ‘habitually, in remembrance of the many delightful & improving hours we have jointly passed in various literary pursuits’.
Hard though it is to credit, intellectual affinity may have been the prime stimulus of Ada’s secret love affair.
Speculations about the nature of Ada’s relationship with John Crosse should not obscure the strength of the family bond that continued to unite the Hen, the Bird (as Lovelace and Annabella continued lovingly to refer to Ada) and the Crow (who relished his nickname enough to make occasional playful use of a gaunt black bird in lieu of his signature).
The difficulty of removing William Carpenter from their lives had occupied screeds of inter-familial correspondence in 1845. In truth, the Lovelaces had never entirely trusted Carpenter after the opening spat in their relationship. The move from Ockham to nearby East Horsley provided a perfect excuse to end it. The tutor’s trial year was up and there was no home adequate to satisfy his (rather grand) requirements at the new estate. Carpenter’s desperate eagerness to stay on beyond his appointed term – despite having secured a professor’s chair and regular work as a lecturer at the London Hospital and University College – suggests that he valued his post and liked his employers better than they did him. But pride was also at stake. Back in 1844, Lady Byron had paid the tutor a £200 advance upon a promised £1,000 to do up a house for his family. Now, there was to be no house and Lady Byron required Carpenter’s written gratitude for the £300 she was still willing to offer, irrespective of the purpose for which it was used. If thanks were not forthcoming – or rather, an apology from the impetuous tutor for having prematurely assumed that Lady Byron would be less charitable – the sum would not be paid. Thanks extracted, and due obeisance made, the money was handed over.
Annabella could be chillingly legalistic where money was concerned, but she had no reason to offer such a generous sum to a man who, however well-meaning – he carried the children off to see the sights of London and on various jolly outings in Surrey – had been a troublesome employee. Carpenter’s demands for improved terms had rarely slackened, while his habit of gossiping about a fiercely private family had caused Lovelace, on 22 August 1845, to describe him as ‘a villainous incendiary’.
Overqualified as a children’s teacher, Carpenter had
