Читать книгу The Remarkable Lushington Family - David Taylor - Страница 16
ОглавлениеOn 20 September 1837 tragedy, struck the Lushington family when Sarah died, just forty years old, leaving a husband and nine children. She was buried beneath the altar in the parish church of St. James, Bushey, a short distance from “Merry Hill House”, her final resting place marked with a simple memorial plaque. Sarah’s death was a great shock to those who knew her. Joanna Baillie wrote to Margaret Holford Hodson1:
And this brings to my thoughts the recent death of our young & dear friend Mrs Lushington (Sarah Carr). You no doubt remember her and what a happy-looking engaging creature she was. She died of an uncommon & very suffering disease, the pain of which she bore heroically to use the expression of Sir Charles Bell who came from Scotland on purpose to see her. She knew her situation and that there was no hope, she knew there was nothing for her but renewed . . . day by day and that she must very soon part with her affectionate – devoted husband & her . . . children, yet she was so cheerfully resigned that it was a blessing to look in her face and see her moving about & doing every little office of courtesy & kindness that came naturally to hand. It made one proud of her as a Christian woman – as one of God’s creatures. A devotee would chide me for saying proud, but it is a pride that is kindred to all natural & Christian feeling. Mrs Hoare took me to see her a few weeks before she died; and the impression I received from her sweet cheerful countenance & beautiful attention to others, will remain with me for ever.2
Although devastated by the loss of his wife, Lushington was not entirely unprepared for the event as she had been progressively unwell over a period of some time which led him to engage the services of Sir Charles Bell, the eminent Scottish surgeon. A letter from Lushington to Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton suggests that she had been suffering with an aggressive form of cancer. Buxton, a deeply committed Christian, prayed, “that he might be able to console his friend Lushington on the loss of his wife.”3 Lushington acknowledged his friend’s kind thoughts but stressed that he would now need to conserve all his energy to bring up his children. One of Buxton’s daughters regretted that Lushington did not share her and her father’s strong religious convictions and wrote, “How I did long for him, to open his eyes and see the blessings he might have! He does so deserve to be truly religious!”4
Another who wrote expressing his condolence was William Marsh, a popular evangelical preacher, who had married Maria Chowne Tilson, one of Lushington’s cousins. Lushington commented on this letter, “It is exceedingly well meant but does not altogether accord with my feelings—I cannot view all things in their light . . . humanly speaking I cannot but think, that a greater evil, a more entire destruction of this world's happiness, could not have occurred.”5
Despite his deep despair, with the passage of time, and assisted by his sister-in-law, Frances Carr, Lushington began to pick up the pieces of his shattered life and resume his legal career. By August 1838, Joanna Baillie reported to her sister-in-law:
Yesterday we had a very interesting visit from Dr Lushington who we had not seen since he lost his wife. It was a great effort for him to come & see us & Mrs Hoare, but he commanded his feelings as well as he could, though tears at one time, when he talked of his little dumb Girl, would not be repressed. This poor Child was with him & Miss Carr who lives with him and takes care of them all at present.6 I hope she will remain altogether for what they could do without her. This last sad year has brought more lines upon his face & whitened his head with many more grey hairs than should naturally have come in the course of eleven months. But this is a melancholy subject and you were but slightly acquainted with our dear Sarah Lushington.7
“Merry Hill House” held a mixture of happy and unhappy memories for Lushington who wrote to his sister-in-law of his “painful fear of returning to my widowed home.”8 He decided to look for another house where he could make a fresh start and provide better accommodation for his family who were growing in years and had a widening circle of friends to entertain. It is here that Lady Byron re-enters the story.
Ockham Park
In 1835 Ada Byron married William King-Noel the son of Peter, Seventh Lord King, Baron of Ockham in Surrey.9 Two years earlier William had succeeded to the title upon the death of his father and, in 1838, he was created Viscount Ockham and First Earl Lovelace. Sadly, William’s marriage to Ada was to prove to be almost as beset with troubles that of her parents.
Shortly before his marriage, Lovelace had begun to enlarge his Surrey estate by purchasing the adjoining manor of East Horsley, from his neighbor the London banker William Currie. The main residence on the newly acquired estate, then known as East Horsley Place, had been designed by Sir Charles Barry earlier in the century in Tudor revival style. Initially, Lovelace let East Horsley Place to a tenant but, in 1845, he decided to remodel the house and make it his principal residence. He was an enthusiastic amateur architect with a particular passion for tunnels and bridges and the result was, and remains, an extraordinary Gothic building of flint and polychrome brick which is approached through a Neo-Norman entrance lodge and a long-curved tunnel.10 Lovelace consulted his mother-in-law about his proposed move to East Horsley and she advised him:
There is no insuperable objection that I can see to the E[ast] H[orsley] plan, provided there is a good Tenant at Ockham. The soil & situation of E[ast] H[orsley] might be more favourable to your health—& the structure of the house seems calculated to secure a more agreeable temperature in winter.11
The move to East Horsley left Ockham Park vacant, and it was advertised to let in The Morning Post in 1845, where it was described as “an excellent mansion house, furnished, most delightfully situate in a beautiful park” with “ten principal bedchambers and dressing rooms, lady’s boudoir, and fifteen servants’ bedrooms.” The property also offered “spacious grounds” which contained “gravel walks, lawns, shrubberies, and parterres, with grotto, temples and summer house, large orangery, and capital walled kitchen gardens.”12 Fortunately, Lovelace did not have to look far for the “good tenant” which his mother-in-law had advised him to find. It was ideally suited for Lady Byron’s old trusted friend and confidante Lushington.
Lushington moved into Ockham Park in 1846 with his children and sister-in-law, who being freed from her responsibilities for Ada Byron, transferred them to the management and care of her brother-in-law’s household. The financial arrangements for Lushington’s tenancy are not known, but it was probably viewed as something akin to a “grace and favour” residence for services rendered. Of course, it was also advantageous to the Lovelaces to have the family lawyer close at hand.
Though deep in the heart of rural Surrey, Ockham Park was conveniently placed for easy access to London. It adjoined the village of Ripley where the Talbot Inn was a staging post on the Portsmouth Road, from which the run to London took just three hours. In 1838, the London and South-Western Railway Company opened its station at nearby Woking providing a quicker and more efficient means of reaching the capital. Shortly after the Lushingtons came to Ockham, the house was described as being entered from Ripley “through a pair of beautiful iron gates . . . [it] is of the Italian style of architecture, and consists of a centre and wings encompassed on three sides by beautiful terraces.”13 The original house had been built in the 1620s but was extensively altered by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor sometime after 1724, and then refashioned in the Italian style in the 1830s. Sadly, most of the house was destroyed by fire in 1948. However, a nineteenth-century engraving, together with family photographs and paintings, show the house during the tenure of the Lushingtons. At about the same time as his move to Ockham, Lushington gave up his Westminster house and moved to 18 Eaton Place in fashionable Belgravia.
Shortly after settling in Lushington wrote, “Ockham is really in perfection; many of the Rhododendrons are out & quantities to come; how I wish you were all here to enjoy this lovely house & a concert given gratis by the Thrushes & Nightingales.”14 That peace was temporarily shattered one day in 1847 by a near tragic accident. One of the servants was “engaged in winding up the large clock” at the house when “the chain broke and the weight (about 7 cwt) fell, going clean through three floors into the hall, where it broke in pieces three large flag stones, all but going through into the cellar.”15 A child of Lushington’s coachman who was passing through the hall, narrowly escaped serious injury, but was so frightened that he was rendered speechless for some time.
The Ockham Industrial Schools
In addition to the more obvious and usual benefits of a large country house, Ockham Park held a unique attraction for anyone with a passion for social reform. This was an “Industrial School” that had been opened by Lord Lovelace and run by him on the same principles of a similar school opened in Ealing by his mother-in-law (figure 10).
After separating from her husband, Lady Byron took up an interest in a number of the social issues of the day. Cynics might question the motives that lay behind her growing philanthropic pursuits, but they were of the “kind that wealthy English ladies of the period, endowed with spare time, money, and useful connections, frequently undertook.”16 Although Lady Byron possessed all these assets, her desire to engage in the reforming of society was genuine. In addition to education, she also took an interest in the emerging cooperative movement as well as joining forces with Lushington and his colleagues in the fight against slavery.
Lady Lovelace, concerned about the education of the poor, consulted with old friends Maria and Richard Edgeworth, Samuel Frend, and, in particular, the Swiss reformer Emmanuel de Fellenberg.17 The latter’s educational theory was primarily a social one in which he believed that the full development of the individual was related to his probable future role in society. De Fellenburg envisaged an agricultural community where people could pursue an unsophisticated, pastoral, and religious existence. In 1834, Lady Byron took a house at Hanger Hill, Ealing, where she opened a school using De Fellenberg’s principles.
Lord Lovelace was a model landowner whose actions at Ockham would have received the applause of Dorethea Brooke in George Eliot’s Middlemarch. The school was not the only practical expression of his social concern. After acquiring the Horsley estate, he demolished many of the old insanitary and overcrowded timber-framed cottages inhabited by his tenants. These were replaced by the well-designed brick and flint-built dwellings, which remain such a feature of the village today. Writing from Ockham in 1839, Lady Lovelace praised her son-on-law’s work:
I see an Infant-School rising up, and the Garden School quite established – both affording models which will no doubt be followed. I observe too, with great pleasure, how judiciously Lord Lovelace improves his Farm-houses & Cottages – & in which he indulges his taste for building, contributes essentially to the health, comfort, & moral habits of his dependants. He shows me what a Land-Owner may do in these respects, & what I have not done.18
In addition to providing “a plain yet sound elementary and religious education,” the pupils of the Ockham schools were to gain knowledge of “the rudimentary principles of grammar, English composition, simple mathematics, linear drawing, history, geography and the theory of music; together with some instruction in natural philosophy.” The Garden School consisted of “Three and a half acres of land . . . set aside for agricultural work and two acres of [which are] devoted to a small experimental forest where curious specimens of forest trees [are] grown in order to discover varieties that would best be suited to English conditions.” The Schools also provided a gymnasium “for the development of muscular power,” a printing press and small workshops fitted with carpenters,’ turners,’ basket makers’ and other tools.”
In 1857, one of Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools visited Ockham. He was impressed by what he saw and wrote a glowing report but added:
It is, however, important not to disguise the fact that the success of this institution is due more to the hearty and genuine spirit of supervision which presides over the arrangements, than to the adjustment of technical arrangement. Dr Lushington’s family watch over the interests of the institution with such devotion and energy as in any circumstances could not but work real wonders.19
The feminist, artist and educationalist Barbara Bodichon, a distnt relation of the Lushingtons, took a close interest in the school.20 A friend reported back to Bodichon after visiting the school saying how pleased she was with it, “and also with Miss Alice Lushington whom most fortunately we found there—She is indeed a charming person.”21
Escaped Slaves
In the middle years of the nineteenth century, the Ockham Schools became the setting for an episode related to Lushington’s antislavery concerns. William and Ellen Craft were slaves who had fled Macon, Georgia in a daring, novel, very public—and celebrated escape in December 1848. Ellen Craft was the daughter of an African-American woman and her white master. As a result, she looked white and was easily able to disguise herself in men’s clothes to aid her escape. Her husband accompanied her dressed as her attentive slave valet. The couple crossed the Mason-Dixon line and eventually made their way to Boston which had an established free black community. There they settled and participated in antislavery lectures through New England where their accounts of their remarkable escape quickly won the hearts of audiences.
In 1850, Congress ratified the Fugitive Slave Act making it a crime for residents of free states to harbor, or aid, fugitive slaves like the Crafts. Two bounty hunters from Macon took advantage of this legislation to travel to Boston to take the Crafts. However, the couple found sanctuary in the home of the Bostonian antislavery activist Lewis Hayden who threatened to blow up not only himself but also his adversaries if they came to his door. After this, the Crafts no longer felt safe in Boston, and they crossed to Canada from where they sailed for Liverpool.
By this time, the Crafts had achieved celebrity status and a number of leading antislavery figures in the United Kingdom took an interest in the couple and, on their arrival in England, sought to help them establish themselves. Among them was the social theorist and writer Harriett Martineau, and it was she who enlisted the help of Lady Byron.22 As a result the Crafts found refuge at Ockham Park and were welcomed as pupils at the school. In addition to furthering their own education, the couple also took up some teaching duties, and it was reported in the press:
William Craft is cultivating his taste for drawing, under an able master. He renders himself useful by giving the boys instruction in carpentering and cabinet making, while Ellen Craft exerts herself in communicating some of her varied mental acquirement to the girls. The children are greatly attached to her, and both she and her husband are happy, industrious, and making progress in their pursuits. The Ockham Schools are kindly and carefully superintended by the daughters of Dr. Lushington, at Ockham Park, which adjoins.
As they started their second year at Ockham, it was reported that the Crafts had been “unremitting in their studies, and have made great proficiency in reading, writing, arithmetic, and in various branches of useful knowledge.”23 When they eventually moved from Ockham the couple continued to speak from public platforms to denounce slavery and promote a boycott of slave-grown produce. In 1860, they published the story of their escape in Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom. They returned to America in 1870 and settled in Savanah, Georgia, where they opened the Woodville Co-operative Farm School, modeled on the Ockham Schools, to teach and employ newly freed slaves.
The older Lushington children were sometimes enlisted to help at the Ockham Schools when necessary. Vernon Lushington told his brother Godfrey that Mr. Jones, the schoolmaster had been “completely laid up by a feverish cold: & is at present taken care of, out of the way of all school bustle, in one of our servant’s bedrooms. A temporary substitute came down from London this morning—I have given two lessons at the school—& shall give one or two more if wanted.”
Lushington’s social conscience was not restricted to the school and, during the hard winter of 1856, concerned for the plight of the Ockham villagers, he wrote to his daughter, “Should the weather continue severe remember you have command of my purse & God has blessed me with great prosperity & I ought not to be niggardly.”24 Some years later, he wrote to his daughter Fanny, “If this frost should last I fear for our poor people. What think you of asking Mr Onslow in our absence in urgent cases to give relief at my expense?”25 Lushington’s care for the needs of individuals, both local or further afield, ran alongside his wider involvement in the antislavery movement. His friend Sir Thomas Buxton described him as an “honest, and generous a supporter of our great cause as could be; and in private life a most kind and faithful friend, with no other fault than too much zeal and too much liberality.”
“A Very Perfect Household”
The household at Ockham extended beyond Lushington’s sons and daughters. It included Ada Lovelace’s children and Annabella, or Anne as she was known in the family, became a particular favorite of Stephen Lushington. Ada Lovelace spent a good deal time away from her family pursuing her passion for mathematics and her pioneering work with Charles Babbage which led to her being credited with the invention of computer programming. She developed romantic liaisons with Babbage and others and indulged heavily in gambling. All this, together with recurring health issues, put a heavy strain upon her marriage. As a result, Lady Byron stepped in taking an active role in the mental and educational welfare of her grandchildren.
Anne Lovelace, who later married the poet and traveler Wilfred Scawen Blunt, was a skilled violinist and both she and her mother studied drawing with John Ruskin. She also had a lifelong love of horses, especially the Arabian breed, and later established the famous Crabbet Park Stud. As a child, Anne delighted in riding with Lushington on the nearby Sheepleas at West Horsley, or on St. George’s Hill between Cobham and Weybridge. Her letters to her mother and grandmother provide some intimate sketches of life in the Lushington household.
A particular seasonal treat for Anne was spending Christmas at Ockham Park where the Lushingtons celebrated the season with the new novelty of a Christmas tree. An excited Anne wrote to her mother in 1851, “We are in preparation for the Christmas tree . . . my various gifts are nearly ready . . . For Dr Lushington . . . I have drawn with pen & sepia some sketches of Ockham House on sheets of note paper.”26 A few days later, she wrote again to her mother:
The Lushingtons are beginning to arrive at Ockham, in different detachments of 1 or 2 or three at a time. I think there are about 5 there now—& more to arrive this week & next week, & I suppose, also the week after that—So that the house is gradually becoming inhabited. Miss Oschwald (by the way Papa is astonished at such a barbaric name!) & Edie & Laura had luncheon & spent part of the afternoon, here, yesterday—I am uncommonly amused at the secrecy the Lushingtons observe about their Christmas presents. They won’t show any to each other, or to any one indeed! I can’t understand what pleasure they derive from this, I do not make any secrets of the things themselves, although I shouldn’t exactly trumpet out who they are for.27
On New Year’s Eve Anne wrote:
The tree yesterday at Ockham went off very well; it stood in the hall, & reached up to the ceiling. The new Lushington sister is very nice looking & agreeable & they all seem very fond of her. The child is very thin & sickly it was ill on its voyage from India . . . Edward Lushington gave me a beautiful silver Indian brooch in the form of a bunch of grapes with some vine leaves.28
After one summer visit to Ockham Park she wrote:
Ockham is indeed looking beautiful and I wish so much that you could see it . . . The gooseberries are ripe here now and they instead of the strawberries are the objects of sundry attacks and certain visits to the kitchen garden—It seems the inhabitants of this house are fond of eating fruit out-of-door, for I always hear a good deal about it!
The roses are now over, at least there are very few left, but the garden being full of so many bright coloured flowers, does not seem to miss much. The pinks and carnations are splendid—those in front of the house look very well.29
Despite her great affection for Ockham Park and its occupants, Anne had inherited the restless spirit of the Byrons. She considered that the Lushington girls led a rather mundane existence, explaining to her grandmother, “they never seem to get into any adventures, at least what I mean is . . . the course of their life is like the course of a smooth river through a flat plain.” Anne’s preferred “the course of a rocky torrent descending from the mountains.” Lady Byron, somewhat prophetically, scribbled on this letter, “There is a fate in this letter—the persuasion that life cannot be ‘interesting’ unless it be tempestuous, full of vicissitudes.” Her mother’s fears became a reality after Anne married.
Ockham provided Anne with a freedom that she could not find elsewhere. She explained to her mother, “It is quite delicious to have the power to walk out of doors at any hour of the day—Ockham is that sort of place, that whenever you return to it, you think it more delightful, at least to me.” She concluded, “I have not yet seen Mr Crosse to speak to him, and I have not seen Mrs or Miss Crosse at all.”
The Crosse Family
“Mr Crosse” was Robert Crosse who was appointed Rector of Ockham by Lord Lovelace in 1852. He was the son of Andrew Crosse of Fyne Court, Somerset, an estate just a few miles from Ashley Combe, another Lovelace property. Andrew Crosse was an amateur scientist whose pioneering experiments in the use of electricity brought terror to the local people. He has been claimed as the model for Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, but this is not possible as the novel was written before the emergence of a quite fictitious story of Crosse creating life in a Leyden jar. Rumors of that supposed event ostracized Crosse from local society and brought him into conflict with the church. Ada Lovelace took a great interest in Crosse’s work and made several visits to Fyne Court.
Unfulfilled in her relationship with her husband, Ada Lovelace had a brief affair with Crosse’s older son, John. Surprisingly, her husband appears not to have been fully aware of this until after he had appointed John’s brother Robert as Rector at Ockham. Ada Lovelace and Crosse had a complicated association that was not helped by his secretly marrying another woman. At one stage during their relationship Crosse helped Ada pawn some of the Byron family jewels to pay off her extensive gambling debts. It fell to family lawyer and trusted friend Lushington to retrieve the jewels and deal with Crosse.30
“The Cleverest Folk of the Day”
Like his in-laws the Carrs’ home in Hampstead a generation before, Lushington’s residence at Ockham Park also became a center for many well-known literary and artistic people. A neighboring estate owner recalled how, “At Ockham Park . . . the famous Dr. Lushington collected around him the cleverest folk of the day.”31 Benjamin Jowett, the Master of Balliol College, Oxford, was a frequent visitor at Ockham where, “to the young people . . . their father’s guest appeared as a mild and amiable cleric, in whom they saw no promise of great things to come.”32 At Lushington’s London home Jowett met the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Lushington’s connection with the great engineer was probably through Brunel’s sister, Sophia, who married Benjamin Hawes, the Liberal MP, another of Lushington’s colleagues. After Hawes’s death, his widow often stayed at Ockham.33
Other visitors to Ockham included the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell—of whom more later, and the Christian Socialist and radia theologin F. D. Maurice. This last visitor is likely to have raised a few eyebrows not only among Lushington’s neighbors in Surrey, but also in wider circles. Maurice was one of the founders of the Christian Socialist Movement and the Working Men’s College in London—an enterprise in which Lushington’s sons Vernon and Godfrey were actively involved. Son of a Unitarian Minister from Suffolk, Maurice entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1823 even though only members of the Established Church were then eligible to obtain a degree. He entered the Anglican ministry and was ordained in 1834 and subsequently became chaplain of Guy’s Hospital, London, where Lushington was a Governor. In 1840, he was appointed professor of English history and literature at King’s College, London. In 1846, the chair of divinity was added to this post.
In 1853, Maurice published Theological Essays in which the views he expressed, particularly those refuting the concept of eternal damnation, were considered by the principal of King’s College as being of unsound theology. As a result, Maurice was dismissed from his professorships. Despite this, Maurice had widespread support from his friends and the wider public who revered him as a great spiritual teacher. Lushington invited Maurice to visit Ockham in September 1859. Maurice wrote:
I have been taking the duty of this village (William of Ockham’s)34 all this vacation. The squire is Dr Lushington, the freshest and heartiest as well as the kindest of old gentlemen. His family has been all that we could desire for friendliest and parish activity.35
To open the pulpit of Ockham church to Maurice was a brave move by Lushington considering his role as one of the highest ecclesiastical judges in the land. A year from the visit, Lushington was placed in a difficult position when he was required to pass judgment upon Essays and Reviews, a book of theological essays that created a storm in the Victorian church.36 While Lushington felt obliged to support the Church of England, privately his sympathies lay with the authors who included Jowett.
Following the death in 1845 of his father Thoms Buxton, Lushington’s old antislavery campaigning comrade, his son Charles came to live in Weybridge, just a few miles from Ockham. He became a regular regular at Ockham Park where he particularly enjoyed listening to the stories told by Lushington who was a great raconteur.37 After one visit in 1846, Buxton wrote in his diary “Dr Lushington more charming with his lifelike, refined, manner, overflowing with kindness & conversation.”38 Buxton’s spiritual conversations with Lushington often turned to the theological controversies of the time. “Dr L talked very largely about the Inspiration of the Bible, that our certainty of it is from within, not from without, that the way to feel sure it I from above, is to study the gospels.”39 At this time, Buxton was questioning much of the earlier beliefs from his evangelical upbringing. He was influenced by Maurice, particularly on the issue of eternal damnation, and confided to his diary, “I do so feel indebted to Maurice for impressing more deeply than ever on my mind the great truth, that Eternal Life consists in faith & love, begun here . . . and that Eternal Death is in Darkness—to be out of sight of God—left to self & sin. Oh that I may be [able] to act upon those truths!”40
Another popular guest at Ockham Park was Admiral Robert Fitzgerald Gambier and his wife. Gambier, the son of Sir James Gambier, was descended from an old French Huguenot family and was related to the Lushingtons by his marriage to Hester Butler.41 He had a distinguished naval career and was the great uncle of the composer Charles Hubert Hastings Parry who later became a close friend of Lushington’s son Vernon and his family. It had been to Gambier that Lushington turned when Vernon was arrested for misconduct during his brief spell as a naval cadet.42 Following the death in 1842 of the distinguished surgeon Sir Charles Bell, who had attended Lushington’s wife during her final illness, his widow frequently stayed at Ockham. Other visitors included Thomas Spring Rice, First Baron Monteagle, and his wife. Monteagle was a member of the Whig Party and served as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Melbourne.
In addition to “the cleverest folk of the day,” various members of Lushington’s large family were often at Ockham Park. In 1844, his daughter Hester married Robert Russell, Capt. RN., whose sister was the second wife of Sir Henry William Vane, First Duke of Cleveland.43 The Russells lived conveniently close to Ockham in the village of Albury. After her husband’s death in 1848, Hester moved to Hatchford End, just a short distance away from Ockham Park. Hester's sister-inlaw Elizabeth, Dowager Duchess of Cleveland, became another regular visitor at Ockham.
The Portrait
In 1862 Vernon Lushington invited his friend William Holman Hunt to visit Ockham to paint the portrait of his father which later fascinated Thomas Hardy.44 Hunt wrote to his patron Thomas Combe:
He [Stephen] is really a dear old fellow—as clear and quick in wit as the youngest man in the company and with the gravest possible judgement in all his remarks and manners. His sweetness of temper to everyone in the house is perfectly remarkable so that it would be a thousand wonders were he not loved as he is—almost to idolatry . . . Vernon it seems is an especial favourite. When he heard the news, he declared that Vernon was the most impudent dog in the world—but as the matter was already arranged he acquiesced in it and promised to give me the best chance he could.45
On sitting down to his first dinner at Ockham, Hunt was immediately challenged for on his views on the American Civil War. He wisely expressed his support for the North, leading Stephen Lushington to exclaim, “Well done! We are all Northerners here.”46 Hunt wrote to Combe:
The good old Doctor has not the virtue of being a steady or patient sitter—in fact he does not sit at all, and I could not wish him to do so for once or twice when I have for a minute kept him in one position his whole expression has become so different that I have not been able to go on, the only chance there is the most perfect perseverance.47
During his sittings for the portrait, Lushington regaled Hunt with stories from his past including how he had once been at the theater in London when, in the middle of the performance, it was announced the “French people have murdered their King.”48 Hunt grumbled in a light-hearted manner to his artist friend Frederic Stephens, “of course as I only began it a month ago I am likely to stay here another eleven months.”49 Hunt greatly enjoyed his time at Ockham, but he was unable to escape the family’s philanthropic passion and, when leaving, was asked if he could assist in the matter of a young women who had fallen on hard times and in whom the Lushington family has taken a particular interest. After returning home, Hunt made arrangements for the girl to start a new life in Australia.50
More Byron Troubles
When Lord Byron died in Greece in 1824, it might be thought that it would bring an end his former wife’s trouble. However, this was not the case. In 1830, there appeared a controversial biography of the poet, written by his friend Thomas Moore, which was entirely biased toward Byron and went so far as to imply that it was necessary for his marriage to fail. Lady Byron did not fare well in the book and turned to Lushington for advice. Sarah Lushington came down heavily upon Lord Byron despite Lady Byron chiding her for her strong feelings.51
Thirty-nine years later, Harriett Beecher Stowe weighed into the debate concerning the truth about the Byron’s marriage when she wrote Lady Byron Vindicated: A History of the Byron Controversy, in which she sought to clear Lady Byron of many of the accusations that had been made against her. However, the result was the opposite and further controversy led Lushington to write to Lord Lovelace that a great deal of the book was untrue and could not have been stated by Lady Noel Byron as the writer implied.52
NOTES
1. Margaret Holford Hodson (1778–1852). Her novel Warbeck of Wolfstein (1820) was a reaction to Lord Byron’s treatment of his wife.
2. Joanna Baillie to Margaret Holford Hodson, October 2, 1837. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Vol. 2, ed. Judith Bailey Slagle (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press).
3. Journal of Sir T.F. Buxton. Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House. MSS. Brit. Emp. S. 444.
4. Priscilla Johnston (formerly Buxton) to Sarah Buxton and Anna Gurney, April 9, 1835, Buxton Papers, 13, 442.
5. Stephen Lushington to Frances Carr, n.d. SHC 7854/1/6/7.
6. Although the “little dumb girl” is not named, it is possible that it was Laura Lushington.
7. Joanna Baillie to Mrs William Baillie, August 21, 1838. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Vol. 1.
8. Stephen Lushington to Frances Carr. n.d. SHC7854/1/6/8.
9. The first Peter King, who was elevated to the peerage in 1725, chose to be known as Baron King of Ockham after the Surrey estate which he had purchased in 1707.
10. For more on Horsley Towers, as the house is now known, see Ian Nairn and Nikolaus Pevsner’s Surrey in the Buildings of England series published by Penguin Books 1962, revised 1971.
11. Lovelace Byron 56 fols. 39–40. Bodleian Library.
12. The Morning Post, June 30, 1845.
13. William Keane, The Beauties of Surrey (London: R. Groombridge & Sons, Paternoster Row, 1849).
14. Stephen Lushington to Frances Carr. n.d. SHC 7854/1/7/2.
15. South Eastern Gazette, July 13, 1847.
16. For more on Lady Byron and Education see Brian W. Taylor, “Annabella, Lady Noel-Byron: A Study of Lady Byron on Education,” History of Education Quarterly Vol. 38, no. 4 (Winter, 1998), pp. 430–55.
17. Lady Lovelace papers and correspondence relating to education are in Lovelace Byron papers 119 fols. 15–232 at the Bodleian Library.
18. Lady Byron to Joanna Baillie. Bodleian Library, Lovelace Byron 188/189.
19. Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education 1857–8. George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1858, p. 557.
20. Barbara Bodichon was a cousin to Beatrice Anne Smith who married Godfrey Lushington. Another cousin, through the Smith family, was Florence Nightingale.
21. Unknown author to Barbara Bodichon, undated but likely to be c. 1855. 7BMC/E/11. The Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University.
22. Harriet Martineau to William Wells Brown, 14 March 1851. The Collected Letters of Harriet Martineau, eds. D. Logan and V. Sanders (Pickering Chatto, 2007).
23. Leeds Mercury, 9 October 1852.
24. Stephen Lushington to Alice Lushington, November 27, 1856. SHC785/1/8/9.
25. Stephen Lushington to Frances Lushington, January 13, 1867. SHC7854/1/7/40. Major Pitcairn Onslow, JP was Stephen Lushington’s neighbor who lived at Dunsborough Court, Ripley.
26. Wentworth Bequest. BL. Add MS 53817-54155.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Stephen Lushington to Lord Lovelace, May 30, 1867. Bodleian Library Dep. Lovelace Byron 173, fols, 58–59.
31. Charles a’Court Repington, Vestiga. Reminiscences of Peace and War (Houghton Mifflin, 1919). Repington, a son of Charles Henry Wyndham a’Court Repington and Emily Currie of West Horsley Place, Surrey, had a distinguished military career. For part of his life, he lived at Maryon Hall, Hampstead, the former home of the Carr family.
32. Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell, The Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, M.A. Master of Balliol College, Oxford (John Murray, 1897), Vol. 1, pp. 227.
33. SHC 7854/3/6/7/23.
34. William of Ockham (1285–1347), the English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher and theologian, who is believed to have been born in Ockham.
35. F. Maurice, The Life of F.D. Maurice (London: Macmillan & Co., 1884), Vol.II, p. 354. It was during this visit that Maurice and his wife were taken to explore the Surrey countryside. On a visit to nearby Albury, their carriage met with an accident but, fortunately, none of the occupants was seriously injured.
36. Essays and Reviews, ed. John William Parker (Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860).
37. Diary of Charles Buxton, October 30, 1859. BL, Add Ms 87180. “On Sunday I walked over & dined at Dr Lushington’s, who are all full of life & sweetness as usual. I note that his talk is almost wholly confined to personal reminisces—& most, very trifling ones—but the charm of his manner & voice gives them value. And many of his stories are excellent.”
38. Ibid. July 16, 1846. BL, Add Ms 87162.
39. Ibid, November 26, 1849. BL, Add Ms 87162.
40. Ibid, December 2, 1853. BL, Add Ms 87168.
41. Sir James Gambier served as Consul-General in Portugal 1802–1808, Brazil 1808–1814, and the Netherlands 1814–1826.
42. Stephen Lushington to Frances Lushington, December 1849. SHC7854/1/7/5.
43. William’s son, Henry, Earl of Darlington, later Second Duke of Cleveland 1788–1864, served as Member of Parliament for Tregony (1818–1826) and was succeeded there by Stephen Lushington.
44. A further portrait of Stephen Lushington was being considered in 1866 when Alice Lushington wrote to G. F. Watts who replied from Little Holland House, “I take the opportunity of repeating what I told your brother, that it is not possible for me to paint the picture at Ockham—if it were I would do so with the greatest pleasure as of course it would be much more agreeable to Dr Lushington, but I will endeavour in every way to make the sittings here convenient & agreeable to Dr. Lushington.” G. F. Watts to Alice Lushington, 15 August 1866. Private Collection. This portrait appears to have been the one presented to the Trinity House, London, which was destroyed by bombing during the World War II.
45. William Holman Hunt to Thomas Combe, September 28, 1862. The John Rylands Library University of Manchester, Eng. MS. 1213/4.
46. W. Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (Macmillan & Co., 1905), p. 219.
47. William Holman Hunt to Thomas Combe, September 28, 1862. John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Eng. MS. 1213/4.
48. In August 1898, when a Bill to make smallpox vaccination compulsory was going through Parliament, Hunt wrote to The Times, “About the year 1862 I was conversing with the veteran Judge, the Rt. Hon. Stephen Lushington, and, as his memory was at the time taking us back to the last decade of the eighteenth century, I asked not withstanding some served resignation of the prejudice that lies ever in aged breasts for the glory of the days of youth—what his view was of the relative beauties of ladies ‘seventy years ago’ and in the passing day. His warmth in answering was astonishing. ‘Well,’ he exclaimed, ‘you can have no idea how it was that not more than one person in twenty was undisfigured by the traces of smallpox, and this generally to such a degree that whatever beauty there had been was very seriously marred . . . The difference I see now is that every lady we meet would have been a beauty in my early days.’” The Times, August 4, 1898.
49. On August 25, 1863, Hunt wrote to Stephens, “Before I left town I worked for about three days on Dr Lushington’s portrait and made it at last really a creditable work. I think it is the best painted portrait of modern times.”
50. Following Stephen Lushington’s death, Hunt wrote to Vernon Lushington, “My dear Vernon, It is a real loss to me—in its degree—as to you and all your family, that the dear and noble old man is dead, but it is impossible to overlook that all that can remain in men’s mind of good for is his still.” Hunt to Lushington, January 22, 1873. Private Collection.
51. “Poor Lord B—I think you very hard upon him. You would not have every man made of Lushington mettle. What would become of rogues then?” Lady Byron to Sarah Lushington, 14 February [no year], Bodleian Library, Dept. Lovelace Byron 91, 43–44.
52. Quoted in Astarte: A Fragment of Truth concerning George Gordon Byron, Sixth Lord Byron. Recorded by his Grandson, Ralph Millbanke, Earl of Lovelace (1905). In this book the author explains how, in 1849, Lady Byron had consigned to Frances Carr a box containing a large number of the most important Byron papers. Francis was instructed that the box should remain unopened for thirty years, and should be left to three trustees, one of whom should be her nephew William Lushington.
