Note Back to Main Text — BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART

"The love of children," wrote Mr. Christie, "was stronger in Lockhart than I have ever known it in any other man. I never saw so happy a father as he was with his first-born child in his arms. His first sorrow was the breaking of the health of this child." There is no need here to tell the pathetic story of that brief life; but the same devoted love which had watched over it, was given in full measure to the children who remained. Of the daughter, Mr. Gleig writes: "She was the brightest, merriest, and most affectionate of creatures; and her marriage, in 1847, to Mr. James Hope, met her father's entire approval. He was satisfied that in giving her to Mr. Hope, he entrusted his chief earthly treasure to a tender guardian, and strove, in that reflection, to overshadow the thought that he must himself henceforth be to her an object of secondary interest only. She never voluntarily caused him one moment's pain. Nevertheless, it must not be concealed that the secession of Mr. and Mrs. Hope-Scott to the Roman Catholic faith greatly distressed Lockhart, although he did full justice to the conscientious motives by which they were actuated."[13] His attitude is best shown in the letter written to Mr. Hope at this time, in which he says: "I had clung to the hope that you would not finally quit the Church of England, but am not so presumptuous as to say a word more on that step as respects yourself, who have not certainly assumed so heavy a responsibility without much study and reflection. As concerns others, I am thoroughly aware that they may count upon any mitigation which the purest intentions and the most generous and tender feelings on your part can bring. And I trust that this, the only part of your conduct that has ever given me pain, need not now, or ever, disturb the confidence in which it has been of late a principal consolation for me to live with my son-in-law."[14]