It sounded almost like a threat. Since Ada was simultaneously boasting to her mother and Agnes Greig that her northern physician (Dr Malcolm) was responsible for an astonishing improvement in her health, ‘Erasmus Wilson’ was surely a code for Mary, the servant who had once worked for Babbage and who was now placing discreet bets on her mistress’s behalf. It’s reasonable to surmise that the curiously underlined ‘medical friend’ was in fact a potential recruit for Ada’s ring of investors.*
By Christmas 1850, while paying a visit to her mother at Esher, Ada was studying the new season’s printed programme for steeplechases. All the best bets had been clearly marked up for her by one of Dr Malcolm’s tipsters. In a word, Lady Lovelace was hooked.
At any other moment in her cautious life, the prudent Lady Byron might have been thoroughly alarmed by Lovelace’s allusion to Ada’s fancy for becoming a breeder of horses. (William himself seems to have been largely unconscious of Ada’s enthusiasm for placing bets until the following spring.) But Annabella had been sidetracked by her daughter’s altered view of Newstead, and the bold admiration with which she now extolled her father and his gambling forebears. Of what use was the careful version of past events that she herself had recently revised and polished and submitted to an admiring Frederick Robertson for his approbation, if Ada were to embrace her unredeemed papa? What could Lady Byron herself do to regain ascendancy over her wilful daughter?
Initially, Annabella resorted to threats. If this was how Lord Byron was to be viewed, then she would play no further part in the upbringing of her grandchildren. They would never see her again! Somewhat, but not entirely, soothed by pleading letters of reassurance that her version – and only her version – of the past would prevail, Lady Byron came up with a new proposal. If Ada loved Newstead so much, then she should have it. William could appraise its value. The money could be raised by selling some of the Wentworth estates around Birmingham. The idea, once Annabella began to consider it (the feelings of the poor Wildmans were entirely disregarded), proved curiously appealing. The house would be her gift to Ada, but the person who owned Newstead – just as she still owned everything to do with the Wentworth estates – would be herself. Annabella, not Ada, would become the presiding angel of Byron’s ancient home.
The Lovelaces were not averse to the Hen’s proposal. ‘Will you sometime write me a letter about a possible exchange of Newstead,’ Ada wrote to her mother on 24 December. She added that Lovelace thought that a deal might indeed be done without too much impact on the Wentworth property. The possibility of acquiring the abbey intrigued them both.
And then, with no explanation, the whole fantastic plan was dropped. By January 1851, Ada (while up to the neck in her plans to set up a racing ring) was making pleasant arrangements for the Wildmans to come and stay at Horsley with Captain Byron and his wife.* Annabella, meanwhile, her mind aswirl with the turbulent emotions that talk of Newstead had brought rushing to the surface, was diverted by another connection to the past.
Augusta Leigh’s raffish old husband had died at the age of seventy-nine in May 1850, the month of Voltigeur’s first triumph at Epsom. By the end of the year, largely on account of her late husband’s outstanding debts, Augusta was destitute. She still had her rooms at St James’s Palace. What she lacked, as ever, was ready cash. She knew that Lady Byron had recently reconciled herself with Mrs Villiers. Was this not the ideal moment to remind Byron’s wealthy little widow that there still existed a sister for whom she had, at one time, felt the most tender sentiments of affection?
The moment was indeed timely. Annabella’s lengthy conversations with the attentive Frederick Robertson had recently included a pious wish that she might meet with Augusta Leigh for one last occasion. On New Year’s Day 1851, she told the impressionable clergyman that – as for herself – she ‘loved her still. I cannot help it.’ On 8 January, Lady Byron dropped a hint about the tales she might tell Mr Robertson – if she wished – about the true nature of Byron’s relationship with his older half-sister.
This was awkward. Anybody living in Lady Byron’s circle would have had to be exceptionally ill-informed not to have heard, by 1850, at least a whisper about Byron’s scandalous relationship with Augusta Leigh. Nervous of causing offence, Robertson expressed careful surprise – and even horror. Could it be that Byron and Mrs Leigh . . .? Was his ‘dreadful fancy’ based upon fact? It was. Expanding graciously, Lady Byron offered the receptive cleric that version of the past to which she herself was now entirely wedded.
Byron had always loved her. Even after his wife left him, he had written those very words. ‘I was his best friend,’ Annabella had recently reminded her daughter (17 September 1850), before quoting Byron’s passionate declaration (‘I did – do – and ever shall – love you.’) But he was not allowed to love her. Another, more wicked influence had prevailed. Augusta Leigh, jealous of a young wife’s spiritual power over the husband she had left, had twisted the evidence. Acting (admittedly under Annabella’s own instructions) as the marital go-between during the last eight years of Byron’s life abroad, Mrs Leigh had fuelled her brother’s hatred of his wife. She had manipulated the truth. This gospel testimony of Lady Byron – ever since Medora had produced in the winter of 1840–1 her own imaginative version of past events – had
