We have seen that Lockhart’s work on the “Life of Scott” was interrupted by a great misfortune. His letters to his family, in the April of 1837, speak most anxiously about Mrs. Lockhart’s health.
The following note to Miss Edgeworth is concerned with his domestic sorrow and of his great work:—
“Dear Miss
Edgeworth,—I am sure you will be very sorry, in the midst
of your own distresses, to hear that my wife, so far from answering your
| 174 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
Once Lockhart detected despair in
the faces of the physicians; then came brief intervals of hope. But a constitution never
strong, and severely tried by earlier maladies and by a succession of sorrows, was unable
to rally. On May 17, Mrs. Lockhart died. Long
before, in “Adam Blair,”
her husband had depicted the passionate grief of a man smitten by the sorest of all
afflictions. This he had now to endure, and he bore it like a man of courage, fortified by
the sense of duty. In later years he
| DEATH OF MRS. LOCKHART | 175 |
“My dear William,—At three this morning my poor wife breathed her last. I pray you signify to Violet and Lawrence that her end was calm, and that throughout her long illness her sweetness of temper had never given way. Both Sophia’s brothers are with me—but this is a terrible blow, and will derange all my hopes and plans of life. I shall very probably ask you to come up by-and-by, for I may need counsel.—Yours affectionately,
Two days later he wrote to his sister:—
“My dear Violet,—As
when this reaches you, you are likely to be with my brothers, as well as my
dear father, I may tell my story at once to all I have now left to care for
besides my poor babes. Sophia’s
mind had been during many weeks in a very unsettled condition, but it pleased
God to restore her to full possession of herself for the last fortnight, and,
though her bodily suffering was occasionally acute, she surveyed her
approaching departure with calmness and humble serenity, and at different times
signified her farewell feelings and desires to us all in the sweetest manner. I
think no one ever lived a more innocent life, and it is my
| 176 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“I have purchased a plot of ground in the New Cemetery on the Harrow Road—a wide, spacious garden with a beautiful prospect—and that morning, an hour before we reach the spot, the bodies of Anne and Johnnie will have been removed thither from the vaults of Marylebone, that the sisters may be henceforth side by side, and the child in the same dust with his mother. . . . The place will be one that we can visit from time to time with ease, and, I do not doubt, with a sense of pleasure.
“Perhaps I am indulging feelings at which many would exclaim as savouring too much of the dreams of the mere fancy. But I don’t believe you will take such a view of the matter. My dearest mother has a resting-place of which I can think with satisfaction, a solemn and awful one; but, except Westminster Abbey, there is no old burial ground here that I could have been able to look at with comfort, and remember that it contained the ashes of my wife. . . .”
| WALTER LOCKHART | 177 |
The rest of the letter refers to his domestic arrangements, and the education of the children. By the invitation of his brother William, Lockhart, with his boy and girl, retired to Scotland, to Milton Lockhart, accompanied by Mr. Charles Scott, himself in deep grief. Walter Lockhart was now, as Mrs. Lockhart describes him in a letter of the year before, a strong, robust boy, reading even Latin books with interest when they dealt with war, “screaming over ‘Gil Blas’” in the original, and, during a holiday at Boulogne, “speaking French with extreme audacity,” fencing, riding, and dancing.1 He was at King’s College School, where the Rossettis, and Dr. Boyd of St. Andrews, were then being educated. Dr. Boyd remembers him as a boy of unusual beauty, with bright fair hair,
1 In the letter of Mrs. Lockhart from Boulogne, she says: “Lockhart and I went to the play, out of curiosity to see some of the very wicked dramas that have been making such a noise in Paris, such as the Tour de Nesle, and, strange to say, I have felt more shocked at some of our own farces. I suppose the extreme want of nature of the pieces makes me feel this. They are extremely well acted. One thing is odd enough: a French heroine is always a certain age, either in the novels or plays, generally with a grown-up family, before she is wicked.” Mrs. Lockhart was much interested in the Blessing of the Sea before the herring fishery begins, and in a touching scene of a woman and a child on the return of a boat. “The woman had a little boy of about four years old; a great ornament of gold, her husband’s gift, I suppose, she pushed into the child’s hand, screaming, ‘Child, look for father—I can’t see!’ her own hands convulsively pressed on her eyes, evidently not being able to see whether she was widow or wife. I could not rest till I learned he was safe; and such a picture of happiness, both going home, their friends congratulating them.” (October 9, 1836.) |
| 178 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
There exists a little pen-and-ink drawing, mounted on brown paper, and inscribed in Lockhart’s hand, “Very like W. S. L. before he went to Cambridge. Eheu!” For Lockhart’s heart was to be doubly tried, first by an exaggeration of youthful errors, and then, after a complete reconciliation, by the sudden and unexpected death of his dear son.
Of his children, shortly before his great loss, Lockhart had written thus to Will Laidlaw (Jan. 19, 1837): “Walter is now a tall and very handsome boy of near eleven years, Charlotte a very winsome gipsy of eight, both intelligent in the extreme, and both, notwithstanding all possible spoiling, as simple, natural, and unselfish as if they had been bred on a hill-side, and in a family of twelve.” Such companions must have been, and were, his best consolation, and the most certain stimulus to action. Indeed, his packets of books and proofs from Mr. Murray followed him to Milton Lockhart. As once long before, and in the stress of a mental anguish even more poignant and more complex, he “sought in business repose.”
Long afterwards, in 1844, Lockhart wrote to Wilson, himself
bereaved in 1837, “Let us both be thankful that we have children worthy of their
| LOCKHART’S GRIEF | 179 |
It will be shown that Lockhart neither forswore society, nor threw a gloom over the happiness of his children. The very letter to Wilson disproves this part of the theory. Mr. Gleig writes, in defence of his old college friend, that Lockhart visited Wilson “at the season of his deepest anguish.” Then, from notes of a conversation with Lockhart, he prints his words:—
“I found Wilson utterly prostrated, unable, or, as he said, determined never to take any interest in the affairs of life again.”
“Well, what passed?”
“Not much worth repeating. I reasoned with him, and tried to show him that neither he nor I had any right to succumb to evils that were not of our own seeking—that we both had work to do and must do it—that it was neither manly nor Christian to mourn as he was mourning.”
|
1 “Christopher North,” xi. 287, 289. |
| 180 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“Had your remonstrances any effect?”
“Yes, I think they had. He pressed my hand, looked up for a moment into my face, and said, ‘It is all true, I know it, but I have no strength.’ However, his strength came back faster than we had both expected, and now he is pretty much what he ever was.”1
Lockhart, within himself, did not become “much what he ever was.” But, except in his letter to Wilson, and in another to Milman, he kept his enduring grief; while, in that cor serratum,
“His night of loss was always there.” |
It is ill work, the criticism of another’s grief: “the heart knoweth its own bitterness.” Let it be enough to say, and later to show, that Lockhart could still find pleasure in nature and in human company; and, above all, could take and give an aging man’s, and a sad man’s, but a brave and constant man’s pleasure in the society of his children.
Lockhart could not work at his Biography of Scott in these months of retirement at Milton Lockhart. His diary tells nothing of his doings from March 3 till May 16 and May 17. On the former date Sir Walter Scott, the son, arrived from Ireland; the latter page bears, between lines of black, the melancholy record of the day. On
1 Quarterly Review, vol. cxiii. p. 230. |
| LETTER TO MISS EDGEWORTH | 181 |
“My dear Miss Edgeworth,—I had some days ago your very kind letter, and I thank you for it most sincerely, though very briefly. I much regret the circumstances which have given pain to you or to others; but the truth is, the enormous heaps of letters committed to me were all copied by ladies, and the originals forthwith returned; and I fear besides innumerable blunders of names and dates which, in the most important of them, it cost me no small pains to correct, there may have been, on the part of my dear Sophy and her assistants, many omissions of hints about omission which had come to hand on separate papers. I hope no very serious evil has been occasioned, but consider that she who had been my secretary for years in preparing these Memoirs only lived to see, not to read my first volume, and in her I lost the only person who could have put and kept me right as to a thousand little things.
| 182 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“I shall bear all you say in mind when I come, if ever, to a second edition. Meantime believe me always most gratefully and affectionately yours,
On December 12, Lockhart notes, “Dine at Mr. George Cruikshank’s, to meet Mr. Dickens, alias Boz.” He takes the children to see Madame Vestris; when he can be, it seems, from the entries, that he is always in their company.
As to his feelings about his book, a trace may be found in a letter to Haydon, part of which has already been cited in another connection1:—
“Your approbation of the ‘Life of Scott’ is valuable, and might well console me for all the abuse it has called forth both on him and on me. I trusted to the substantial greatness and goodness of the character, and thought I should only make it more effective in portraiture by keeping in the few specks. I despise with my heels the whole trickery of erecting an alabaster image, and calling that a Man. Probably I shall be very severely handled for daring, in the seventh volume, to indicate the decay of his intellectual vigour. But I did this very deliberately, on purpose to show that all the good points of his moral being, and all the predominant trains of fancy and feeling, survived the wreck. The work is now done, and I leave
1 February 11, 1838. |
| A MARRIAGE-MYTH | 183 |
For the rest, Lockhart’s diaries of 1838 and 1839 show that he kept his usual company; saw, among new faces, Hayward, Carlyle, Sterling, Mr. John Hope; went to Commemoration at Oxford with Christie; dined with Traill and Gleig; took the children to plays and to the country houses of intimate friends; occasionally dined alone with Walter, and became acquainted with Mrs. Norton and Miss Burdett Coutts. Autumn he spent in Scotland with his relations.
As happened in Sir Walter’s case, people were determined to marry Lockhart, and selected for him a young lady of great fortune. On April 22, 1839, he writes to his brother William:—
“I have sent you lately two or three Satirists, &c, for private refreshment. The story of my marriage to —— is revived in such force that I expect to find it in some of these worthy chronicles anon. The fact is, I have not seen the damsel above twice these twelve months, and I never was in her house in my life. Yet Lady —— formally congratulated me on the engagement. . . . This malice is at her, not me. . . . If ever the girl proposes to me, you shall hear immediately.”
|
1 The profits of the book went towards paying off Sir Walter’s debts. |
| 184 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
The absurd news reached the Border, and Lockhart was congratulated by one of “huz Tividale poets,” not the tuneful weaver of Galashiels, who breakfasted with Scott and Hogg on a notable occasion, but the Bowden Bard. He wrote:—
“Dear Sir,—It’s rumoured hereabouts ye’re gaun to wed the widow” (the lady was not a widow). “They say the widow has a land of big stane-houses in the Strand, chockfu’ o’ siller, kists on kists. A five pund note will ne’er be missed, which would refresh yours, with regard, for auld lang syne,
Bowden Moor is in Roxburghshire; there Scott, on a day, was guided by a pillar of smoke to the shy haunt of a timid Tory voter.
To his sister Violet, Lockhart wrote often; she was in ill health, and his father was old and ailing. “The Queen,” he says, “was much delighted with Sydney Smith’s late definition of Tom Macaulay—“a Book in Breeches;” but it is only a terse anglification of old Talleyrand’s mot on the same subject, eight years ago, “Voilà un gros livre, on m’avait parlé d’un grand homme.”
The year 1840 finds Lockhart
dining, or giving dinners, or taking the children to parties almost every day. His
engagement book might make envious men of letters feel as young Mr. Moss did
| DEATH OF CHARLES SCOTT | 185 |
This letter to Miss Edgeworth speaks of the loss of his brother-in-law:—
“My dear Miss Edgeworth,—The confirmation of the newspaper report of Charles Scott’s death never arrived till last night—the Persian Minister’s messenger having been stopped by our Ambassador at Vienna for a week. I had no doubt of the truth of the sad story—but still could not write to you, as I otherwise would have been sure to do, in the absence of direct intelligence.
“I am very grateful for all your kind thoughts and
recollections. Charles has only joined a
company who are, and ever will be, as present to me, while memory remains, as
if they still were partakers in what we call Life. It is, however, a very
serious
| 186 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
Lockhart’s life at this period is best read, perhaps, in his letters to Milman.
This note, after some details about “The Emperor” (Mr. Murray) and the Quarterly, describes a “Demonstration” with some vivacity:—
“My dear Milman,— . .
. Yesterday I spent in Glasgow. I found the town all occupied with a Chartist
procession of at least 20,000 people arranged by trades and districts—the
object being to welcome back, as the first huge banner explained,
‘Victims of Whig persecution,’ to wit, two cotton-spinning scamps
convicted of a conspiracy for, inter
alia, murder about two years ago, and now returned from
Botany Bay by the favour of the Whig Government, who have reduced their seven
years of exile to one. The flags and symbols were of the most
| A DEMONSTRATION | 187 |
1 Lockhart used to banter Sir Roderick Murchison about the British Association. See Mr. Geikie’s “Life of Murchison.” |
| 188 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
1 A nickname of Sir Roderick Murchison. |
| THE OXFORD MOVEMENT | 189 |
The trouble of the Oxford Movement was now beginning, as the following letter shows: Lockhart’s position in the Quarterly was that of the moderate High Church party:—
“My dear Milman,—Thanks for your seria mixta jocis. I believe I must cut ecclesiastical things entirely—it is so very hard to keep the peace among my reverend allies: but I think I altered nothing in your last article, though I omitted a few things, and italicised one or two of the quotations; and I am sure you will own that if the article were to be in the same number with that on Tom Carlyle, this was as little as the Editor could do in the way of manipulation, and most assuredly I took a hundred times more liberty with the Oxonian,1 wherefore his jobation is yet to come. He has spent these three months past in Ireland, and is still there. . . . I expect that his lucubrations will be highly curious and interesting, as regards the prime object of his study, viz., the actual state and system of the Romish clergy, and I hope that this study will be found
1 Sewell apparently. |
| 190 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“Of the nine poetesses1 only one has written in acknowledgment—and perhaps she is the best of them, ‘V——.’ She says that ‘all her good has come on her at once,’ for she never ‘hoped’ either to be praised in the Quarterly Review, or to get a husband, and that both this article and a proposal ‘reached her in the same week.’ I expect cake. H. B. must not make her the Terpsichore of the choir.
“I am sorry John Murray has not sent you the Memoirs you wanted—pray, en attendant, give us a short article on the French tract you mention—but can I not persuade you to buckle to Juvenal and Persius? You only have to assume the truth as to the profound ignorance of the public, and make free use of the best bits of Dryden, Gifford, Drummond, &c, &c, and throw off a fine rhapsody on Satire—Greek, Roman, Italian, French, and English—and you can’t fail to produce a most entertaining, instructive, and really valuable article.
1 Nine Muses reviewed in the Quarterly. |
| POLITICAL GOSSIP | 191 |
Here is a trifle of political gossip, and literary talk of new books. Lockhart’s interest in Hayward may be observed; they were not deeply attached to each other:—
“My dear Milman,— . .
. I am not able to tell you whether Croker had any offer from Peel. His phrases are obscure on that head; but he seems to
dine daily with the new Ministers, and to be in good humour with them all.
Mahon had an offer of his old berth;
but I fancy that, the new Foreign Secretary being a peer,
Peel wished to take the Foreign department in the
House of Commons on himself, and therefore made a merit of declining.
Peel says he behaved very handsomely—and he has
gone with his wife to the Loire apparently in placidity—so I look for his
name by-and-by in a Gazette. Ashley has,
to Peel’s extreme regret, stood aloof altogether on
account of the Factory question—and the Carlton says
his dissent has already cost them
| 192 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“I have had as usual a request
to give hints as to literary persons worthy of favour, and I hope some of my
hints, falling in with those of more potent voices, may be attended to
anon—e.g. as to Hayward, who ought to have a Police Magistracy or the like, if
he pleases, as soon as possible. I suppose nothing could tear him from Mayfair,
or a Colonial Bench might be adorned easily with his person. The Quarterly has
but few on its staff, and of these I don’t know any other that is very
likely to be served soon. In fact, we are a small band. Only Croker, yourself, and the Editor can be called
regular supporters—if I may put myself with you two. Sewell, I fear, may hardly do for us, unless
occasionally when I can tempt him out of his own beat, which he has pretty well
exhausted. I wish they would give him a good living, however—and have
said so—or a prebend, better still. Ford, Broderick, and one
or two more, though now and then useful, are hardly more than outlying
volunteers—old Barrow quite
effete. I wish I could find one or two really good and sturdy hands; for we are
all getting old, and I for one am often weary enough of the business of
article-making. I assure you I have had neither offer nor promise of anything
for myself—indeed, I never had anything like that,
| CENTRAL AMERICA | 193 |
“Poor Theodore is off the list of claimants. He has of course died deep in debt—they say £30,000—and he has left six children, and there is a subscription going on, I think favourably, in their behalf. Four girls—all young women! and the mother, who is said to have been married by T. H. a year ago. His exit was characteristic—but I’ll keep it till we meet.
“There is a deal of very curious reading in a new American book by Stephens on Central America—rediscovered cities, temples, statues, inscriptions, &c, &c; but, to take up that, one should have Lord Kingborough’s huge work digested. The images have a most Hindoo look some of them—others almost Egyptian. Mr. Catlin is going to head a party of a hundred, under the Yankee Government, for exploring a region said to contain similar monuments in the direction of the Rocky Mountains. Perhaps we shall see the cloud dispersed. Already Stephens gives us minute plans and sections of palaces which nobody seems to have disturbed since the days of Pizarro, and he appears to have strong belief in the existence at this moment of an unvisited and entire Indian kingdom, enclosed between two
1 Mr. Murray. |
| 194 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
Lockhart had acquired a habit of noting the deaths of the year on the first page of his diary. In 1842 he marks, “This year die Dr. Maginn, Allan Cunningham, Tom Hamilton” (the brother of Sir William), “Mrs. Fergusson” (his doctor’s wife), “and my father.”
His diary records, “I placed my father in his coffin with my own hands.” Dr. Lockhart was buried beside his wife in the “Dripping Aisle” of Glasgow Cathedral.
Lockhart promoted a subscription for Mrs. Maginn, and in a letter to Wilson (p. 209), denounced the Carlton for refusing a contribution.
|
1 Archaeology has much neglected Central America. To this day the Indian city haunts the fancy of explorers, and has believers in its existence, despite Mr. Haggard’s story of its downfall, “The Heart of the World.” |
| COPYRIGHT BILL | 195 |
Meanwhile the usual social functions go on: “Walter and I dine at Christie’s;” “Duchess of Sutherland’s fête for the King of Prussia;” “Lady Salisbury’s, Lord and Lady Mahon, Lord de Ros, Miss de Ros, Lord and Lady Douro, Duke of Wellington, Captain Percy.” March 15: “The Flatterer” (Mr. Flatters) began his bust of J. G. Lockhart.” “To ‘Acis and Galatea,’ with the Murchisons, Walter, and Cha.” April 5: “This is the evening of debate on the Copyright Bill. Lord Mahon, Macaulay, Lord John Russell, Peel: the Bill carried through in its important clauses in the Committee, and good hopes of its passing this it year.”
The Bill was of great importance to the family of Scott, and Lockhart
discussed it in the Quarterly, No. cxxxvii.
His letter to Mr. Murray on the subject is in
Mr. Murray’s “Memoirs,” ii. 499. “You can, if you
please, reject the article in
toto,” he says. “I don’t at present feel at all
disposed to take thought about Peel’s or
any other politician’s opinion. I have studied the subject, and so has Wordsworth, who is at least as likely to study any
question to advantage as Sir Robert Peel. I propose no plan for an
Act of Parliament. But I think I have shown that unless more protection be given to
authors and publishers—whose interests I have treated as identical, which they
are—our literature must expire in a muddled heap of fraudulent and worthless
compilations, and base appeals to the lower passions.
| 196 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
Lockhart’s relations with his children at this
period were as amiable as they were unusual. Miss
Lockhart was being educated at Calais. Her brother went from King’s
College School to read with Mr. Holden. He had been entered at
rabbits, and looked forward to grouse. To both of the children Lockhart wrote frequently, treating them almost as equals in age and
understanding. The gossip of Parliament, anecdotes of the Queen and Prince Albert, news of the
Duke of Wellington, are mingled with bulletins as
to Pepper and Ginger, doubtless of
the old Liddesdale breed, the Dandie Dinmont strain. To
Charlotte he writes that he misses their “cosy little
Sunday dinners,” “your little interruptions.” “I
miss your voices, and feet, and plague, sadly,” he writes to Walter, “but must bear my solitude for a while
longer yet.” He sends Sydney
Smith’s latest jokes, old jokes now, and well known. “Now
mind ‘Medea,’” he
writes to Walter; “it was the first Greek play I ever read,
and I can still say every chorus by heart.” “The King of
Oude”—then a neighbour of his—“can flirt
like a Christian,” he writes to Charlotte. To
Walter, at Mr. Holden’s, he gives some
advice, Walter having
| THE CHILDREN | 197 |
|
Dear Mr. Rose,
I can’t suppose
You’ll frown on my petition,
The tiniest dose
Of verse or prose
Will satiate my ambition.
|
| 198 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
|
But if you be
In topping glee
(As I could wish you ever),
Throw off for me
Some jeu d’esprit,
The cleverest of the clever.
|
|
The book I’ve got—
As yet no blot
Upon its virgin pages—
May show perhaps,
Ere long, the scraps
Of many bards and sages.
|
|
But, grant who may
The boons I pray,
A blight’s on all my posies,
If luckless scorn
Shall plant with thorn
The spot I’ve marked for Rose’s.
|
He was no gloomy recluse, who, fatigued, like Caxton long ago, with weary writing, yet found time and energy for long letters of family and political gossip to a boy and a girl. The politics are dead, dead are the uncles and aunts and friends of whom Lockhart writes, but the ardent affection in these old letters never dies. Here follow a few somewhat longer extracts—Miss Lockhart was then in Calais:—
“My dear Charlotte,—Your French
epistle has given me much satisfaction, and I regret that, how
| LOUIS NAPOLEON BONAPARTE | 199 |
To Walter he writes on “Coningsby,” which Croker asserted that he had never read:—
“ . . . Ben Disraeli, the Jew scamp, has published a very blackguard novel, in which the Pusey and Young England doctrines are relieved by a full and malignant, but clever enough detail of all the abominations of Lord Hertford, and Croker figures in full fig.1 I should not wonder if there were some
1 As Mr. Rigby. Lord Hertford left a large sum of money to Mr. Croker. |
| 200 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
In March 1844 (to advance a little beyond our date), Walter failed to get into Christ Church and Balliol. Lockhart makes no harsher criticism than this: “I am in great difficulty, and I don’t doubt you will quite share my concern.” Again: “Your letter gives me great pleasure. I trust there will ever be entire confidence between us. Our interests are and always must be the same, and I don’t doubt that when the proper time comes we will agree as to your choice of a vocation.
“I have always considered that it would be absurd to choose the Bar, unless you had satisfied me and yourself, while at Oxford, of your capacity for very arduous study, and, I may add, of your having a natural faculty for public speaking. The last I never had—and it was the great error in my early days that I nevertheless selected the Bar. In these days there were no Debating Societies at Oxford; and it is very different now.
“But I had to make my election at a very early age—19—and had no relations capable of understanding the case or of advising me judiciously.”
He then says that they must consider about a profession after Walter has taken his degree at Oxford. He next refers to
the little office (the Auditorship of the Duchy of Lancaster) which
| WALTER LOCKHART | 201 |
As has been said, Walter did not matriculate at Oxford. At Cambridge, where he stayed but a short time, he acquired those singular habits of vain expense which a certain proportion of undergraduates develop. By the end of 1846 he was thinking of the army, and was already in debt, and in his father’s displeasure. Lockhart set down his extravagances, and rightly, to vanity; and the old familiar course of things ensued—a sudden outburst of a young man’s folly, estrangement, and, at last, full reconciliation and early death. Of this sorrow more is to be said.
Letters to Will Laidlaw, of this period (1842), are interesting.
“My dear Laidlaw,—I
feel very much your kindness in taking care that my first intelligence of your
attack should come in your own handwriting, and show that neither mind nor the
nobler functions of the body have suffered. Be of good cheer—temperance
you always practised, but you can still reduce,
| 202 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“Let me hear again soon. I am writing to-day to Sir W. Scott, whose last letter gave good news of himself and wife, but very bad ones of the state of the Native Army in Madras. I am afraid he must have a share in the great doings now arranged for the Cabool frontier. God send him well out of that and safe home. If this Copyright Bill pass the Lords (as I hardly doubt it will), it will be a very great thing for his interests. Indeed, I expect he will have some proposition for Cadell, which will enable him soon after the law is made to call his land his own. Said Cadell also talks grandly of the prospects of his pictorial edition of the Novels, of which No. 1 is published this day; but commerce is at present in a very ticklish state, and I fear he will find less success—at the start, at all events—than he has been looking for.1
“Give my love to Mrs. Laidlaw and the young ladies. My boy and girl are both well—but, alas! you and they wouldn’t know each other if you met. And yet I should not say so, for Walter is very like
1 The “Abbotsford Edition” was clumsy and unsuccessful. |
| LETTER TO LAIDLAW | 203 |
To Laidlaw he again gives a budget of family news:—
“My dear Sir,— . .
. My boy is now as tall as I am—17
years old—and exceedingly active and robust; a good horseman and an
excellent oarsman; a very good boy and a great comfort to me, though not as yet
very ardent in his pursuit of learning. His sister is at 15 more of a woman in appearance, manners, and
acquirements, than many considerably more advanced in years. She is, I think,
though not beautiful, a very graceful girl, and I have in her a constant and
agreeable companion at my fireside and in my walks. So much for
home.—Sir Walter and his wife
continue to have perfect health in India. Some time ago he fancied he might be
able to effect an exchange and come home, but the bad times of trade have not
spared the booksellers, and the debt remaining heavy, after I had hoped to hear
of its total liquidation, he, for the present, has laid aside all thoughts of
quitting the post he holds. He had for a year the command of the regiment, and
will, I trust, have it again soon, and when he has that the allowances are very
handsome. Meantime he writes regularly and in excellent spirits. Lately he
tells me, hearing that a Highland battalion
| 204 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
A few other notes from Lockhart’s domestic correspondence at this period may be given. Here is a little note on illustrious persons, written to Miss Violet Lockhart:—
“I was twice at Court last week, once as an Oxford Doctor,
when the Duke of Wellington went up with the Oxford
address to the Queen and Prince Albert; but I hardly saw her, there was
such a crowd of Academics. The Duke, however, looked quite himself, and read his
address in a good firm voice, not a whit shaken; and she [read] her answer in a very
sweet silver tone, with much grace. I was also to be presented, and, kissing her hand,
| COURT NEWS | 205 |
Lockhart then alludes to the domestic happiness of Her Majesty in very pleasing terms—but here quotation must cease.
“My children,” he writes to Miss Lockhart, “have been very happy in some country visits, and much admired everywhere, and their respectable papa was seduced by a Court belle of nineteen, Lady Wilhelmina Stanhope, into dancing till five o’clock at a Kent County Ball, which fact will probably receive due notice in to-morrow’s Age.”
These fragments out of a life, busy with literature, politics, society, and, till Walter went to Mr. Holden’s, with the daily tutoring of Walter, may remove the not uncommon impression that Lockhart, after his wife’s death, was a moody and lonely man. He did not, and could not, forget, and once or twice, as to Wilson, he expresses what is most intimate, and lays bare his heart. But he was emphatically no kill-joy.
His dancing days were over, despite his exertions at the Kent County
Ball. In 1842 and 1843 he
| 206 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“Up the rocky mountain, And down the mossy glen, We daurna gang a-milking For Charlie and his
men.” |
“My dear Christie,— .
. . At Milan we had a couple of days most interesting—the Duomo being by
many miles beyond any Gothic Cathedral I
| LETTER FROM ITALY | 207 |
| 208 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
| WALTER IS PLUCKED | 209 |
Once arrived, we find him rushing, as it were, instantly to dine with Christie and Gleig. On December 15 he took Walter to Balliol, where he met Mr. Shairp, later Principal of St. Andrews. Dr. Jenkyns examined Walter: Mr. Jowett would have stretched a point, Dr. Jenkyns did not, Walter was plucked.
We may now resume the correspondence with Milman, first offering a letter to Wilson on Maginn’s affairs:1 (see p. 194)—
“I forgot yesterday to say anything about Maginn. The subscriptions have come to about £350 to £360, and a good deal of that has of course gone already, keeping four people alive. I believe no more will subscribe here. I have tried the Carlton Club in a very serious way, by a long letter to the Committee, and they sent an unanimous refusal. Government gave a cadetship for the boy; but if he is equipped and sent out, that will swallow all the money in hand at the least.
“James Wilson’s wife has, I believe, got a gover-
1 I owe this letter to the kindness of Mr. C. M. Falconer, of Dundee. |
| 210 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“Please observe the doctor’s creditors were arranged for through myself and a few others some ten years ago, when we raised nearly £1000 for him, and paid off with that about £3000 or £4000 of debt. Just before he died he passed through the Insolvency Court on schedule, Dr. G. says, of just under £10,000.
“The girls are comely, lively, clever girls. . . . One writes poetry!
“I went yesterday audaciously and witnessed a queer scene in a tavern opposite Bow Street Police Court, and dined abominably with three or four dandies of forty or fifty. . . .
“One of the attorney’s clerks who acted counsel was Brougham himself—every touch and tone—the other Thesiger, two most clever fellows, and their speeches, examination and cross-examination of the witnesses, and the Judge’s charge (Abinger alive!) were all quite equal to the best of Matthews’ mimicries. Peter must not be here again without seeing this comedy—the only one I have seen for many years, and almost the best I ever saw—such a complete show-up of all the trickery and pompous humbug of forensic practice. . . .”
In a brief note to Wilson he
says, “I hear you are
| EGLINTOUN TOURNAMENT | 211 |
Out of place, and out of date, here occurs another note to Wilson; it is not in harmony with Mrs. Gordon’s picture of him as a moody, world-weary mortal:—
“My dear Wilson,—I have just heard from R. Finlay that you are idle enough to be going to the Eglintoun Tournament. Be so good as to go on a Glasgow hack armed with a rung, and I lay 500 to 5 you will beat all the Knights, Squires, and Heralds to a jelly in a jiffy. Astley’s, to be serious, is a better thing by far than, from witnessing the rehearsals, I expect the performance to prove. I shall regret not having been there if it turns out, after all, that you are in armour, and the veritable chevalier inconnu.
“Now contrive to come with Allan.—Ever yours,
From this excursion into the past, we return to Milman and the Review.—
| 212 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“My dear Milman,—I have been, and shall be while the East wind lasts, plagued ever and anon with a complaint which unnerves me, so that I don’t know when we may meet. I fear you have worse distresses at home—but it is long since I heard anything of your household.
“I must now think, in spite of all maladies and misfortunes, of the shop. Can you do anything for me this time? I don’t think anything you gave me has been better liked than the Arundines Cami, and I say so in hopes that you may snatch a morning or two for something of an unfatiguing sort. Yet I have nothing to suggest. What say you to Wordsworth’s new volume? I fear the tragedy is very dull, and can see but little to admire in the rest—except some very fine feeling verses about Burns. Campbell’s new concern I have not seen, nor have I heard either it or the other mentioned by any one. That it should be come to this!—Ever yours,
Lockhart had now to condole with Milman on a domestic loss, and remembered his own:—
“My dear Milman,—I am
very sure I need not say how often, and how much, I have been thinking of
Mrs. Milman and you of
late—how well I re-
| MACAULAY’S “LAYS” | 213 |
The same memory recurs here: Lockhart’s friend and physician, Dr. Fergusson, had lost his wife:—
“My dear Milman,—I was very sorry to miss your wife and you; but hope you are soon to be settled, and that we shall then meet often. I am well in health again, and fancy I shall be able to find some pleasure in society this winter, which was not the case last season almost at all. But neither for you nor for me will there ever be any approach to comfortable feelings, unless the mind have regular work found for it beyond the sphere of personal reflection. I wish you would make an effort for your own good, and also for mine exceedingly, by setting about an article; but I am greatly at a loss to suggest a subject. If Macaulay’s ‘Roman Lays’ be out soon, I shall look to you for a review thereof in the Christmas Number, that is, if they be worthy of his talents—which I hope and trust is to be the case.
| 214 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“Our friend Fergusson is in a calm state—I rather think recovered as well as he is likely to be for many a long day. I was present at the funeral—and lived over again the hour in which you stood by me—but indeed such an hour is eternally present. After that, in every picture of life the central figure is replaced by a black blot; every train of thought terminates in the same blank gulf. I see you have been allowing yourself to dwell too near this dreary region. Escape it while the wife of your youth is still by you; in her presence no grief should be other than gentle.—Ever affectionately yours,
Lockhart was now, as will be seen, placed in a difficult position. He admired Macaulay. Milman was devoted to Macaulay; but Macaulay had assailed Croker. The letter shows Lockhart’s readiness to aid deserving writers:—
“My dear Milman,—I am
exceedingly vexed to find that the sheets containing your article on Macaulay are not printed
off—for the gross insult to Croker
in his new article on Madame
d’Arblay makes it very difficult for me to sanction the
publication of your eulogies on the perpetrator. The detection of the imposture
about F. Burney’s age was made in
the Quarterly
Review, as you know. Can the editor allow his contributor
to be thus handled, and then caress the enemy? Would not
| MACAULAY AND CROKER | 215 |
“Do not suppose that I blame Macaulay for criticising Croker in regard to that affair; but it might have been done in the style of a gentleman. It is done in a style of low, vulgar rancour and injustice.
“Nor, on the other hand, do I wish to take credit for any special tenderness of feeling towards Croker. I think he has, of late especially, not treated Murray and myself at all well in the concerns of the Quarterly Review. But he is at least one of our most prominent hands; and can we continue to accept his assistance without giving him some right to reclaim against the appearance, at this moment, of such a paper as yours? Make the case your own. Suppose such an attack on you, from so distinguished a quarter, for what you had written in the Quarterly Review some years ago. Suppose you had been assailed by Blomfield, or Whately, or Sydney Smith; and suppose it to be felt that the odium ecclesiasticum had been mainly excited by your use of the Quarterly Review against doctrines or tenets or Church parties espoused by such an assailant as one of these.
“There is another difficulty which I must state. I never received any civility from Peel in the line of patronage but once—when he took office in 1834.1 Croker then called here and said Peel was anxious
1 In 1838 Lockhart, writing to Mr. Cadell, described Peel as “the greatest Reformer in heart, and the ablest in head, of his period.” |
| 216 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
| NEWMAN | 217 |
Notwithstanding Croker’s grievances, an admirable and laudatory review of the “Lays,” with a welcome to Macaulay as a prospective historian, appeared in the Quarterly (March 1843). Lockhart’s hand, perhaps, may be detected in a note, quoting Hudibras’s description of the Roman aldermen—
“Followed by a world of tall lads, Who merry ditties trolled, and ballads.” |
The next letters are on articles about Newman’s conversion, and other ecclesiastical questions then flagrant:—
“My dear Milman,—On
all the great heads I think you are right and sound, and have taken also what
will be thought the proper combination of religious tone and mundane sense. I
go with you nowhere more than in your argument on Celibacy; but pray look
sharply to every syllable where St. Paul is
alluded to, bearing in mind the ordinary notions of his inspiration—for in one or two places you seem at least to
discuss his dicta as if that notion were thrown over.
The whole of what you say about the Puseyites is excellent—I only
desiderate more distinct references and more bold use of their Lives of the
Saints. The lecture on coarseness of idea and intolerance in the new juveniles
is likely to tell with exceeding effect—it is so just, and to me it is
new too. This part will
| 218 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“If I were you I would not at all hesitate about expressing your fear that the two French parties are equally in the wrong. Have we not, in fact, the same with us—our Ultra-Church and our Ultra-Liberal factions? You have already, I think, taken up the proper to and fro between the extremes here, and every word on the foreigners will carry its application with it, if you exert all your dexterity.—Ever yours affectionately,
“My dear Milman,—I
thank you for your letter, and will meditate on the subject thereof; but I do
not believe I shall be able to make up my mind to ask any one to do a paper on
Newman, unless you should yourself
encourage me to ask you. I think the tone of your last article perfect, and so
I fancy all its readers (sane readers) have done; excepting, of course, the
Morning
Post, who considers it a bit of Hoadleyism—Croker, who suspects it of being Ward’s post-nuptial
statement—and Palgrave, who says
he is utterly puzzled to make out the
| VIA MEDIA | 219 |
“I leave this place to-morrow—hope to be in London this day fortnight, and to see you there then, or speedily afterwards. Meantime pray consider what a great service you might do, not to the Quarterly Review merely, but to the Church and the country, by devoting some leisure to the working out of your own sage suggestions. Two or three such articles as the last would really rally round your name a very great body of via media people! I wonder you are not already a bishop, but hope and trust I shall see you one in three or four years.—I salute my godchild, and remain, ever affectionately yours,
“My dear Milman,—Your
note gives me an anxious and earnest hope that you mean to do Newman, and I am certain you, and only you,
could do him in a way that
would be satisfactory to the sane and superior mind of the country. I may not
be able to have a talk with you to-morrow on such matters, therefore I say now,
that if you undertake the thing, I shall feel at ease; and if you don’t,
I know I shall have much trouble with Gladstone,
| 220 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“If you do this now, and rightly, you will carry on and complete the very salutary impression made by the paper on Michelet—which I think you ought now to acknowledge generally. I hear it is commonly given to Dr. Turton. I think I wrote you so. They had traced it to the Abbey. I think it very likely—there not being time now for much politics, and it being on the cards that we may find either another Conservative Government contracted, or a Radicalised Whig one in power by the time Parliament meets—that we may be forced to publish a number in February, for the purpose of taking ground decidedly and deliberately. I have promised, however, to set about the miscellaneous two hundred pages of the spring number forthwith, so as to be quite ready in case there should be a call of this nature on the Quarterly Review.—Ever yours affectionately,
Milman finished his article on Newman. Lockhart writes:—
“My dear Milman,—You
could not have told me more agreeable news. Be early ready, and be sure you
shall have the last touch at the last proof.
| TO MILMAN | 221 |
“I suppose you rather approve of sending a few Littlemore black sheep for the wide tables of the New Zealanders. G. will for the present be occupied with anti-agricultural schedules and devils-dustrial calculations; but, depend on it, his creed will by-and-by show itself in Elections of Antipodal Mitres—if—if—if—if the Government endureth—a right pregnant if.
“Ellenburgh is writing a Proclamation, say his colleagues to be—but on what subject, or what place he is to have, I have not as yet been informed. I think, in case of war with Jonathan, he would do well at the Admiralty. Indeed, I don’t know why he might not replace Arthur presently as well as Albert. The Queen could make him a Field-Marshal if she liked, and I back him to invent a hat that would please even Jeames.1
“All good things be on you and your household, now and ever. Amen.
“P.S.—Have you read Arnold’s second volume? I suppose his work ought to be reviewed, and I am sure you are the proper person, if you should feel disposed.
“I shall get to London about the end of this month, and so I suppose will you—so my rural flir-
1 One reference, at last, to Thackeray. |
| 222 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“Kindest respects to Mrs. Milman, in spite of all her sarcasms upon
Milman’s article on Newman’s book was courteous, if controversial. The lay mind is rather baffled by the learning.1 The Rev. James Smith, of Ecclesmachan, who seems to have been very erudite, was able to correct Newman and de Maistre, and to inform Milman on certain points. A via media was what the Quarterly tried to follow. Lockhart was free from bigotry in these matters, and this child of the Covenant, when abroad, was very fond of the society of learned priests of the old faith. This appears in his letters of travel, which usually describe the ordinary sights dear to tourists, and do not need to be cited.
|
1 Quarterly, vol. lxxvii. p. 404. |
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