Ada’s long concealment of this second pawning was gallantly ascribed by a loyal parent to a prolonged loss of memory that could have been caused by a stroke or seizure. In fact, this was the dreadful moment at which Lady Byron was forced to accept that she could no longer trust her daughter in any respect. What she could and would still do, with passion, was to defend and exalt her. Nobody, not even well-meaning Anna Jameson, who imprudently criticised Ada for denying her a final deathbed visit, was permitted to say a single word against Lady Lovelace. (It was that unrecorded but evidently harsh comment about Ada – together with the discovery that Mrs Jameson had been a secret provider of funds to her daughter – that severed this closest of all Lady Byron’s female friendships.)
On the evening of 21 October, Byron Ockham arrived to see his mother for a last time before he returned to sea, newly commissioned as an officer. Watching him as he peeped in at Ada through a half-open door – the doctors had advised against any emotional farewells – his grandmother caught a glimpse of the wretchedness in the young man’s eyes before he turned and tiptoed back down the stairs. Ockham’s adoring sister came into Lady Byron’s room in tears that night.
It should already have been clear from Ockham’s rough manner (if not the tattoos he bore upon his hands) that such a youth would never accept the elevated rank that had been imposed upon him. (Lovelace, using every connection he knew of to secure his son an officer’s rank, had even procured a glowing reference from Lord Zetland’s brother, Admiral Dundas.)
Directly after leaving his mother’s home, Byron stuffed the hated new uniform into a carpet bag, posted it back to Horsley Towers – and vanished. Charles Noel, who had always been more attached to this wild, affectionate boy than his own hardworking son and namesake, volunteered to track the runaway down. A discreet advertisement (no identifying name was given, but reference was made to lightly tattooed hands, a deep slow voice and a seaman’s gait) enabled a detective to run the fugitive to earth at a Liverpool inn for sailors. Here, after initially denying his identity, Lord Ockham gave himself up on 9 November.
A month later, Ada’s eldest son was sulkily aboard again, serving on Lord Nelson’s own old flagship, the Victory. The posting was no sinecure (the battered old ship had been converted into a depot store that was permanently lodged at Portsmouth), but it meant that a watchful eye could be kept on the rebellious young man while decisions were taken about his future role. Helped by Greig’s and Lushington’s excellent naval connections, Byron Ockham was despatched in 1853 to the Malta station in the Mediterranean, soon to become a naval hub point for the Crimean War. It must have pleased Annabella to think that the boy was following in his grandfather’s hallowed wake. (Byron, during his youthful travels, had spent three weeks at Malta.)
Ada knew nothing about Ockham’s defection. Little active consciousness remained in the twilight world that now offered Lady Lovelace only intermittent release from pain. She spoke in riddles, calling her illness a good bargain and claiming that treacherous conspirators wanted to separate her from the mother to whom she now clung. She imagined shadows into looming figures who blotted out the light from the doorway. Terrified of what lay in store for her, she nevertheless longed for death.
The end, so cruelly slow to arrive, came suddenly on the evening of 27 November. The two lawyers were paying one of their visits to sort through Ada’s papers. Annabella, worn out by a long day of watching by Ada’s side, had nodded off in her room when Lovelace and Greig rapped on her door. It was half-past nine. The two men gave her the news she had both dreaded and longed for. Her beautiful, eccentric, brilliant child, aged only thirty-six – the age at which her husband, too, had gone – was dead.
Accompanying the soberly dressed men to Ada’s room, Annabella found herself unable to register what she had been told. How could her daughter have slipped away during one of the rare moments when she herself was not keeping watch beside her child? Could she in truth be dead? Bending over the bed, Lady Byron held her candle close to Ada’s parted lips and waited, watching for a breath that would cause the flame to waver. She raised the candle higher. Ada’s eyes did not open. Once again, she brought the flickering candle back to catch a breath from the pale mouth.
About to repeat the process, Annabella found herself being gently ushered out. Back in her room, Lady Byron sat at her desk, thinking. Had they only given her time, she could have shown those blundering intruders that Ada had in fact waited to die until a beloved mother was stood at her side. Picking up her pen, Lady Byron recorded in a firm hand that Ada had died at ten o’clock, while in her parent’s presence. That was how it should have been. Her record would make it so.
Later, when the house was silent, Annabella went to sit beside her daughter’s body. Alone, she watched the slow hardening of the haggard features that she herself had carefully sketched almost three months earlier. Too late, she regretted having agreed with Lovelace that the children – her granddaughter was actually present, fast asleep in a different part of the house – should see their mother once more, before the burial box enclosed her for the last long journey to Newstead. To remember the extraordinary, passionate Ada in all the radiant glow of her vitality: surely that was the kinder way?
Down in his study, Lord Lovelace was also awake, writing letters in a strong, steady hand that belied his own
