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
