The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart
Chapter 18: 1837-43
John Gibson Lockhart to Will Laidlaw, 30 April 1842
“24 Sussex Place, Regent’s
Park,
April 30, 1842.
“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. | |
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and that
will do wonders. Perhaps you may not know, for great pains were taken to
conceal it, that Professor Wilson had a
similar seizure a year ago. Ever since, he has resolutely abstained from all
strong drink whatever, and his friends assure me he now not only shows no
symptom of the malady, but looks as if he had renewed his youth under the
salutary influence of the pledge.
“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. |
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Sir Walter Scott, and Charlotte very like her mother and Anne.—Ever yours affectionately,
Robert Cadell (1788-1849)
Edinburgh bookseller who partnered with Archibald Constable, whose daughter Elizabeth he
married in 1817. After Constable's death and the failure of Ballantyne he joined with Scott
to purchase rights to the
Waverley Novels.
Janet Laidlaw [née Ballantyne] (1786-1861)
The sister of James Ballantyne of Whitehope in Yarrow; in 1810 she married William
Laidlaw, friend of James Hogg and Walter Scott.
William Laidlaw (1779-1845)
The early friend of James Hogg and Sir Walter Scott's steward and amanuensis.
John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854)
Editor of the
Quarterly Review (1825-1853); son-in-law of Walter
Scott and author of the
Life of Scott 5 vols (1838).
Walter Scott Lockhart (1826-1853)
The younger son of John Gibson Lockhart and his wife Sophia; a military officer, he
inherited Abbotsford in 1847.
Anne Scott (1803-1833)
Walter Scott's younger daughter who cared for him in his old age and died
unmarried.
Sir Walter Scott, second baronet (1801-1847)
The elder son and heir of Sir Walter Scott; he was cornet in the 18th Hussars (1816),
captain (1825), lieut.-col. (1839). In the words of Maria Edgeworth, he was
“excessively shy, very handsome, not at all literary.”
John Wilson [Christopher North] (1785-1854)
Scottish poet and Tory essayist, the chief writer for the “Noctes Ambrosianae” in
Blackwood's Magazine and professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh
University (1820).
