Ibid.
38. Joanna Baillie to Margaret Holford Hodson, January 2, 1825. Letters of Joanna Baillie, Vol. 2.
39. Joanna Baillie to Margaret Holford Hodson, May 5, 1829. Letters of Joanna Baillie, Vol. 2.
40. Ibid.
41. Carr was buried in a vault at Hampstead parish church. An inscription reads, “To the memory of Thomas William Carr Esq. of Frognal in the Parish and Eshott Hugh near Felton and Hetton in the county of Northumberland FRS FGS etc. Barrister at Law Treasurer of the Honourable Society of Grays Inn for 25 years His Majesty’s Solicitor of Excise in the management of important changes effected in the excise revenue during the above period/He was uniformly distinguished by his talents and zeal for the public good in the administration of justice/which gained him the confidence and esteem of the various Ministers/of His Majesty’s Government/In private life he conciliated the respect and love of all classes/By the urbanity of his manners his extended information/& sound judgement/& by the exercise of every conjugal/paternal and social virtue/He died on 27 April 1829 in the 60th year of his age.”
42. Joanna Baillie to Isabella Carr, December 1829. Further Letters of Joanna Baillie.
43. Ibid.
44. Joanna Baillie to Anne Elliott, December 25, 1829. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie, Vol. 1.
45. Maria Edgeworth to Harriet Butler, May 6, 1831. Maria Edgeworth. Letters from England 1813–1844.
46. Ibid. Maria Edgeworth to Harriet Butler, March 16, 1831.
47. Ibid. Maria Edgeworth to Harriet Butler, May 6, 1831.
On 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
