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
