From the Baron’s account she [Miss Ada Byron] must be perfection . . . highly simple, hateth the city and gay world, and will not be likely to turn up her nose at you and me, the respectable aged friends of her lord.
In 1849, Sir Richard Ford had lost both his mother and his wife. (His second marriage to Mary Molesworth, sister to the owner of the Westminster Review, would not take place until the summer of 1851.) In the winter of 1850–1, then, Sir Richard Ford was a lonely widower. It is clear that his main contact in the racing ring was Ada herself, it is also incontrovertibly apparent from Ford’s involvement that William Lovelace must have known something about what was going on. While it remains impossible to establish just how much William was personally involved in the booking and laying of bets, but the presence of his friend in Ada’s ring makes it clear that Lord Lovelace was never an innocent bystander.
It was Ada, however, who led the way and her elderly ring were awed by the (initially) elaborate nature of her strategies. On 13 January, a respectful Richard Ford told Ada that he and Nightingale (Ford referred to him as ‘the sportive Nightingale’) were planning to meet in London ‘to talk over the wonderful combinations in your letter’. A financial innocent himself, Ford frankly stated that he would never want to bet more than £5 and that he imagined ‘making a book’ to be like ‘living at the brink of a precipice’ (27 January). Nevertheless, Ada’s confidence was infectious. ‘£3,000 this year!’ Ford exclaimed in another undated letter. ‘How my mouth waters at such draughts. But by what magic is such a sum to be obtained & how is Chiles [Samuel Chiles was a Vauxhall-based bookmaker, seemingly recommended by Dr Malcolm] become so suddenly consumed into the depositing of thousands from not having a halfpenny?’
Ford’s willingness to be drawn into Ada’s net of speculators reminds us of just how dangerously alluring Byron’s daughter could be. By March 1851, Sir Richard himself was paying regular visits to bookmakers to negotiate terms and deals about which he patently had not the faintest degree of understanding. Between times, he advised Ada about her plans for the Pyrenees, paid visits to Horsley Towers, arranged jolly dinner parties for the ring (but only when his daughters were out of the way) and even blithely reported that he was off to dine in ‘The Enemy’s Camp’ with Lord Eglinton, the owner of Voltigeur’s greatest challenger, The Flying Dutchman.
How good was Ada at bookmaking (or more accurately, at gambling on horses)? The fact that her ring stuck with her through at least one full racing season suggests that she must have had some degree of success. Nevertheless, the few scraps of notes and papers that survive from the bookmakers themselves suggest that the excited countess was doing little more than following tips – for which she paid quite handsomely – and making judgements based on the odds that were being laid. Occasionally, a kindly tipster warned ‘Her Ladyship’ away from an impulsive choice. Ada, blithe as a lark despite her increasing ill health and the fact that she was now seldom able to walk for more than a few yards without pain, ignored them all.
Disaster sprang upon her like a beast from the jungle. On 1 May 1851, in what has ever since been known as The Great Match, Lord Eglinton’s Flying Dutchman challenged Voltigeur (‘The Flyer’ and ‘Volti’ by now, to their adoring fans) to an eagerly anticipated rematch at York, running on the old Knavesmire course. (It was where Dick Turpin, one of the most infamous horsemen of all time, had been hanged in 1739.) The crowds were immense, since both the champions were Yorkshire bred. Many of the 130,000 people present had walked fifty miles to watch the event. Ada’s ring, led by herself, had backed the Zetlands’ colt.
Ada was not present in person (she was too ill to leave her bedroom at this time) to learn the catastrophic news that Lord Eglinton’s horse had beaten the prodigious Voltigeur by a length. Ten days later, Teddington won at Epsom. The odds on the Derby’s confidently predicted winner were 3/1. Ada, who had persuaded Lovelace to loan the impecunious Dr Malcolm £1,800 to bet against Teddington, had now in total suffered losses of £3,200, while also bearing full financial responsibility for the losses of her disappointed ring.
It remains unknowable to what extent either John Crosse or Charles Babbage were directly involved at this point in Ada’s ring. It is known that Ada was personally responsible during this time for obtaining the living at Ockham for Andrew Crosse’s eldest son, Robert, and that Robert’s father expressed his gratitude for her assistance at a time when his son (who had a young family to support) had been seriously ill. Equally apparent from the friendly letters that Robert and Andrew Crosse wrote to Ada in 1851 is the fact that they knew nothing about either a racing or a romantic connection between Lady Lovelace and Robert’s older brother, John.
Charles Babbage falls under more suspicion than Crosse because of the incontrovertible fact that his former servant, Mary Wilson, ran bet-placing errands and allowed her name to be regularly invoked in the covert dealings of the ring. But did this mean that Babbage himself was involved? The long and mysterious correspondence with Ada about a shared ‘book’, while it clearly predates her activity in the racing world, has helped to muddy the waters. Thus, when Babbage suddenly again mentions ‘a book’ to Ada on 13 January 1851, it sounds intriguing. Babbage’s letter recommends that when ‘the book’ arrives, Ada herself should read out Sir James South’s instructions to her maid, ‘in order for your influence in causing them to be followed’. While it is tempting to construe South
