On 3 December 1852, Ada’s coffin – her husband had made sure that it was a handsome one (silver-handled, mounted with the Lovelace coat of arms and mantled in violet-coloured velvet) – was conveyed from Newstead to nearby Hucknall Torkard, to be laid in the crowded Byron vault alongside her father and beneath the plaque on which Augusta Leigh, naming herself as the donor, had created a last enduring link to the brother she adored. Ada’s own plaque, by her specific request, carried only the dates of her birth and death, together with the information that she was Byron’s daughter and Lord Lovelace’s wife.
The crowds at the church gate were large. The funeral itself was an intentionally private ceremony. The widowed Sir George Crauford and Peter Locke King represented the widower’s family, with the 7th Lord Byron and Charles Noel appearing for the Byron side. The only outsiders, with the exception of the Wildmans of Newstead, were the two lawyers who now faced the tricky task of reconciling Lady Byron with her unhappy son-in-law.
Woronzow Greig had wasted no time. While still at Newstead, he read aloud to Lushington the ardent appeal that he himself had prepared. Gratitude was now Lord Lovelace’s chief thought, Greig wished Lady Byron to understand. Every shadow of (unjust) reproach would be withdrawn. A full admission would be made of how her son-in-law had wronged her, when visiting Leamington in June 1851, by undervaluing the real concern Lady Byron felt for her only child. The earl was willing to become as wax in her hands, to remodel as she pleased, if only Lady Byron would not abandon him in this time of affliction.
Stephen Lushington suggested a different approach. He advised that the appeal should come directly from Lovelace himself – and that it should be sent out before Lady Byron issued her own commands. The thinking was surely right, but neither Greig nor Lushington had appreciated the high degree of Lovelace’s pride or of Lady Byron’s stubbornness. Lovelace might well be feeling remorseful, but he was not willing to forgive the fact that the double pawning (bluntly referred to by the earl as ‘the robbery’) of his jewels had been concealed from him until after his wife’s death. Annabella’s tart response, delivered via Lushington – Lady Byron now declined to address her son-in-law directly – was that, since she herself had uncomplainingly borne the total cost of their double recovery, the earl had nothing to grumble about. He had his diamonds; what, then, was his complaint? And how dared Lovelace compare her prudent discretion to his own deceit about – and complicity in – her daughter’s gambling! Annabella did not resist the opportunity to remind her son-in-law of the ‘unlimited confidence’ he had formerly expressed in the very man responsible for the ‘robbery’: John Crosse.
There is no doubt that Lady Byron was being extremely harsh. (Ralph would later hold the mean-spirited and blame-filled letters despatched to his father after the trauma of Ada’s death as responsible for an ineradicable hardening in Lord Lovelace’s personality.) But other elements were also at work. It was during the week that the earl received this ferocious letter (it was written on 16 December 1852) that the bereft Lovelace finally began to comprehend how deeply his beloved wife had betrayed him with John Crosse. Writing back the following day to beg the Hen for an interview – it was never granted – Lovelace described the desolation that he felt, now that ‘every cherished conviction of my married life has been unsettled’. Did Lady Byron seek to augment his sorrows? If only she would tell him what, precisely, it was that he had done to displease her! All he begged for now was the chance to understand, and to be understood.
The more that Lovelace grovelled, the more merciless his adversary became. Any hint of criticism of Ada from her husband was seized upon as evidence of the wretched earl’s vindictive and unforgiving spirit. And how dared he breathe a word (he hadn’t) against ‘the Mother whose child you depreciate & condemn beyond measure’!
On 11 January 1853, Woronzow Greig advised his bewildered friend to recognise that Lady Byron’s views were indeed ‘very peculiar’ and stop arguing. Better if he had. Instead, within a day, the distraught Lovelace had ignited another row. Rashly, he accused his mother-in-law of using ‘casuistry’ to score cheap points. The earl had forgotten that Lady Byron always liked to have the last word in a dispute. Retreating behind a wall of silence, she simply closed the door.
Where the law was concerned, however, Lady Byron was meticulous. She promised and paid £5,000 towards Ada’s debts (after deducting the cost of recovering Lord Lovelace’s pawned jewels). She was scrupulous in following Ada’s wishes concerning the future of the children. Annabella would spend six weeks of each year with her grandmother. Ralph would remain entirely under Lady Byron’s supervision. Since Lord Ockham wanted no part of his heritage, arrangements would be made for her younger grandson to become her legal heir. Young Annabella, too, would receive a generous bequest. All this, Lady Byron was prepared to do – and nothing more.
Excluded from his mother-in-law’s life, Lovelace finally found a way to express his feelings when, in 1862, he decide to honour the memory of his late wife, deep within the heart of Horsley Towers.
Vaulted, spangled, pillared and painted, the earl’s secret shrine to Ada Lovelace is a gilded treasure box of fantasy run wild. High above the unconsecrated altar of his private chapel, William Lovelace installed two large grey tablets. The one on the left, named for Ada, has been pointedly emblazoned with the ten commandments that Ada so often chose to ignore. Facing
