It was, nevertheless, important for Ada not to offend the Greigs in the summer of 1850. Woronzow had played a large part in arranging for Byron Ockham’s transfer to the Daphne, captained by his own friend Edward Fanshawe, and now safely anchored at Valparaíso. Meanwhile, Agnes, Greig’s gentle Scottish wife, had just volunteered to chaperone young Annabella around Europe, an expedition of the same kind that Ada herself had enjoyed as a young girl. The project suited Mrs Greig, who had been seriously ill during the previous year. It also freed the Lovelaces to pursue their plan for a round of northern visits.
Money worries were still preying on Ada’s mind as she prepared for the autumn tour. Writing to her daughter out in Germany on 25 August, she confessed to her horse-loving child that economy had compelled the sale of several of their favourites from the stud. As a further saving, only the Wilson siblings, Stephen and Mary (the Babbage family’s former servants), would accompany the Lovelaces down to Ashley at the end of the year: ‘rents are half paid, we are in some difficulty . . .’
One of the greatest treasures to which Ada possessed unfettered access was the Lovelace diamonds. This magnificent set of jewels, given to his wife at her marriage, formed a regular feature of William’s letters to Lady Byron as he questioned – always a little anxiously – how they were being cared for. The idea of raising money on the jewels first lodged itself in Ada’s mind in July 1850, when she asked Charles Babbage to arrange for a private inspection of ‘the diamonds’ at the ‘Exhibition d’Industrie’, adding that this ‘would help me’. Since Ada cared nothing for diamonds, it’s hard to see why she would have thought such an experience useful, if not to assess the sale value of Lord Lovelace’s most prized heirloom.*
Ada’s worries were not alleviated by the insistence of Lady Byron that her daughter should be constantly available to provide companionship to herself as and when a widowed mother might require it. On the brink of the Lovelaces’ northern tour, Annabella stepped up the pressure. Their departure date was set for the last week in August; on 19 August, two piteous requests for a last little glimpse of Lady Byron’s only child reached Great Cumberland Place. Accusations followed. How could Ada have neglected to visit Moore Place the previous week, when she was staying at Horsley Towers, a mere half-hour’s drive away?
Annabella knew how to tweak her daughter’s conscience. Truly, they had believed the Hen still to be at Brighton, responded Ada within an hour. Of course, she would try to rectify such an oversight. Indeed, she would take the London train down to Esher that afternoon and then return to the city on that same night. But the Hen must promise not to become ‘frightened or astonished or otherwise affected’ if she failed in the attempt. The Bird was going to do her best.
Ada was always vulnerable to Lady Byron’s reproaches, but she had become wearily familiar with her mother’s methods. Further complaints from Moore Place were forestalled by posting a precise itinerary. Referring to their money difficulties with artful indirectness, Ada experimented with using a bit of emotional blackmail. A lack of funds, she hinted, might well oblige the Lovelaces to linger on at Ashley Combe after the trip ‘by way of economy’. Ashley was the one place from which Lady Byron could not reasonably demand daily companionship. It was too remote, and Ada knew it. The implication was clear; if Annabella wanted her daughter to nurse and humour her, very well. But she must pay for the privilege.
The response was predictable. Perhaps from meanness, but more probably from habitual obstinacy, Lady Byron refused to be drawn. If extravagance forced her profligate children into seclusion, so be it. They and she must endure the consequences.
The autumn tour began with a long-promised visit to Knebworth, a Hertfordshire mansion which Edward Bulwer-Lytton had richly Gothicised in the style most admired by William Lovelace.* From there, the travellers proceeded to William and Fanny Nightingale’s Derbyshire home, Lea Hurst, and on to Thrumpton Hall, a recently ‘improved’ Jacobean mansion in Nottinghamshire inhabited by Captain George Byron and his young wife, Lucy Wescomb, who owned the house.
George had been Ada’s childhood friend, but no record survives of whether the cousins discussed Newstead Abbey, the nearby house at which the Lovelaces planned to pass a few days. George Byron’s father had spent many happy months roaming through the Newstead woods in search of rabbits and pheasants to shoot, while his more brilliant cousin was off being lionised in London. Probably, Ada admired the young garden oak being grown at Thrumpton, an offshoot from one that Byron, as a boy, had planted at Newstead. The sturdy sapling was a gift from Newstead’s new owners, the Wildmans, of whom both George and Lucy Byron spoke with great affection. (Wildman had apparently just turned down an offer from Barnum to purchase the celebrated scrap of bark on which Byron and Augusta had carved their initials.) Ada’s own feelings about Newstead remained ambivalent. She was half-dreading the visit.
On 7 September, the Lovelaces arrived at the house which was now Thomas Wildman’s home. Ada’s mother, who had paid just one covert, inquisitive visit to Newstead shortly after her separation from Byron in 1816, had seen the old house at its lowest ebb, grown almost as derelict as the gaping, glassless window (a relic of the ancient abbey) that soared above it. Since then, under Colonel Wildman’s energetic ownership, a transformation had taken place. A fortune had been lavished upon the rescue mission which, at the time of Ada’s visit, was virtually complete. Showing off his achievement with forgivable pride, the kind-hearted colonel – he had spent days swotting up on scientific subjects in advance – was
