The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart
Chapter 10: 1821-24
John Gibson Lockhart to Jonathan Christie, [1821]
“My dear Christie,—My
brother William has just left us after
spending a couple of days, and telling us all the grand story of the
coronation. He vexed me a great deal by saying that you are still looking but
poorishly, but rejoiced me by his confirmation of your intended Scottish trip
twice, because I think that will inevitably do you much good, and because I am
sure it will do me much good to see you, of which pleasure I hope it is not
possible I am to be deprived, if you do turn your nose northwards. Is it quite
fixed that Mrs. Christie can’t
come with you? Might she not venture in the steamboat at least thus far? I mean
to Edinburgh?—for the journey from thence to this retirement is but a
bagatelle. If she and the bairns could, I need not say how happy it would make
Sophia and myself. At all events,
1 Mr.
Hayward, in later years, told Lockhart that “Valerius” was
used as a handbook at Harvard College in America. A sagacious reviewer
described it as “a religious tale by an American.”
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| 290 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. | |
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you will come. If you come hither first, I will, I think, contrive some very nice trips for you, and I
shan’t care how far north I go with you afterwards. Within very easy
rides of this are Yarrow, Ettrick, Hermitage Castle, Hume Castle—I know
not how many fields of battle, clannish and royal. Even my gardener derives his
title of ‘Cock-a-Pistol’ from having his cottage on the place where
a certain knight of Buccleuch, or Cessford, was slain. The field in front of
the house is ‘Charge-law.’ In short, ’tis all haunted or holy
ground. Melrose is within half a mile, Dryburgh four miles off, Jedburgh
fourteen. I am sure you could spend days here very tolerably, and sheep’s
head and whisky toddy would cut short the evenings. Sir
Walter says he won’t allow me to have you all the while,
but we shall not fight about that matter, for he is but two or three miles off.
Won’t Traill and you come
together? William tells me he gave you a copy of
‘Valerius’
and abuses me for not having sent one myself. I put one up to be carried (with
a letter for you, and a baby’s cap from Sophia for
Mrs. Christie’s last gift) by Robert Buchanan—shortly after the book
was published. But Buchanan sent back the parcel, being
obliged to defer his journey to London till some time after. In the meantime I
had gone into the country, and the book had been damned, so you will pardon me
for not being very anxious to find another method of conveyance.
William says Theodore
Hook men-![]()
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tioned my
being the writer. This must have been some guess of Croker’s, for (unless Blackwood played false) nobody could know but Sir
Walter Scott and my brothers. All this is non tanti. I had quite forgot the book,
and all that to it pertained, until William revived my
recollection. At least, I was trying as much as possible to forget it and the
disappointment I had met with, part of which (but this may be the merest
vanity) I cannot help attributing to the frigidity of my publisher.
“Mr. W. S. Rose
is at Abbotsford. I am going up the water of Yarrow with him to-morrow to see
Hogg and the wild-ducks (for
Rose is a great sportsman for a palsied man, to say
nothing of a poetaster); as for myself, of course I have merely an eye to the
hodge-podge and the absurdity of such a juxtaposition as the most sensitive of
bels esprits, and the
roughest of all possible diamonds. If I had thought there was any possibility
of seeing the coronation, I would have come up, but without question there will
be more of them in our day. The Queen is,
I suppose, at Edinburgh by this time. I suppose the Jeffreys will, for Brougham’s sake, make a slight attempt, but on the whole
I believe this part of the country was never in better humour.—Yours,
most affectionately,
William Blackwood (1776-1834)
Edinburgh bookseller; he began business 1804 and for a time was John Murray's Scottish
agent. He launched
Blackwood's Magazine in 1817.
Henry Peter Brougham, first baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868)
Educated at Edinburgh University, he was a founder of the
Edinburgh
Review in which he chastised Byron's
Hours of Idleness; he
defended Queen Caroline in her trial for adultery (1820), established the London University
(1828), and was appointed lord chancellor (1830).
Robert Buchanan (1786-1873)
Scottish clergyman, philosopher, and poet educated at Glasgow University where he was
successor to George Jardine in the chair of logic (1827).
Queen Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1768-1821)
Married the Prince of Wales in 1795 and separated in 1796; her husband instituted
unsuccessful divorce proceedings in 1820 when she refused to surrender her rights as
queen.
Jonathan Henry Christie (1793-1876)
Educated at Marischal College, Baliol College, Oxford, and Lincoln's Inn; after slaying
John Scott in the famous duel at Chalk Farm he was acquitted of murder and afterwards
practiced law as a conveyancer in London. He was the lifelong friend of John Gibson
Lockhart and an acquaintance of John Keats.
John Wilson Croker (1780-1857)
Secretary of the Admiralty (1810) and writer for the
Quarterly
Review; he edited an elaborate edition of Boswell's
Life of
Johnson (1831).
Abraham Hayward (1801-1884)
English barrister and essayist who contributed to the
Quarterly
Review and wrote
The Art of Dining (1852); his translation
of Goethe's
Faust was published in 1833.
James Hogg [The Ettrick Shepherd] (1770-1835)
Scottish autodidact, poet, and novelist; author of
The Queen's
Wake (1813) and
Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified
Sinner (1824).
Theodore Edward Hook (1788-1841)
English novelist, wit, and friend of the Prince of Wales; he edited the
John Bull (1820) and appears as the Lucian Gay of Disraeli's
Conigsby and as Mr. Wagg in
Vanity Fair.
Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773-1850)
Scottish barrister, Whig MP, and co-founder and editor of the
Edinburgh
Review (1802-29). As a reviewer he was the implacable foe of the Lake School of
poetry.
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).
William Lockhart (1787-1856)
Of Germiston and Milton-Lockhart, the elder, half-brother of John Gibson Lockhart; he was
Conservative MP for Lanarkshire (1841-56).
William Stewart Rose (1775-1843)
Second son of George Rose, treasurer of the navy (1744-1818); he introduced Byron to
Frere's
Whistlecraft poems and translated Casti's
Animale parlante (1819).
James Traill (1794-1873)
Of Hobbister, Orkney; educated at Balliol College (Snell Exhibitioner) and the Middle
Temple, he was a police magistrate in London. Traill was John Christie's second in the duel
with John Scott.
