Person:Laurence Lockhart (1)

IGI gives his name at birth as William or Laurence Maxwell Lockhart. Scottish archives have the will of Laurence William Maxwell Lockhart, Lt. Col. 2nd Royal Lanark Militia, d. 23mar1882 at Mentone, reg. 17jul1882 Edinburgh (scotlandspeople). Dic nat biog,: Lockhart, Laurence William Maxwell (1831-1882), novelist, was born in Inchinnan, Renfrewshire, the third son of the Revd Laurence Lockhart of Milton Lockhart, Lanarkshire (b. 1796), and his wife, Louisa, daughter of David Blair, an East India merchant of Glasgow. John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) was his uncle and his brother was the army officer Sir William Stephen Alexander Lockhart (1841-1900). In 1841 he was sent to school at Newington House, Edinburgh. After two or three years he returned home and was educated privately until he entered Glasgow University in 1845. He stayed there, with a year's interval, until 1850, when he entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He graduated BA in 1855 and MA in 1861.On 9 February 1855 Lockhart received a commission as ensign in the 92nd regiment (Gordon Highlanders). He joined his regiment at Edinburgh, went with it to Gibraltar, and landed at Balaklava on 15 September 1855. He was made lieutenant on 4 October and that winter he served at the siege of Sevastopol. The regiment returned to Gibraltar in May 1856, and Lockhart went to England on sick leave in 1857 and joined the depot in Scotland. During 1859 and 1860 he held a regimental appointment at Reigate, Surrey, and afterwards at Cambridge. In 1862 he joined his regiment in India, where it had been sent in 1858. He returned with it to England in 1863 and was promoted captain on 19 January 1864. He retired from the army in 1865.In March 1860 Lockhart had married Katherine Anne Russell (d. 1870), daughter of Sir James Russell, of Ashiestiel, and his wife, Mary, daughter of Sir James and Lady Helen Hall of Dunglass. They had several children. Since his retirement he had been contributing to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, and his first novel, Doubles and quits, was serialized there before being republished in its entirety in 1869. It was a light-hearted military comedy of errors which received mixed reviews. Personally, Lockhart was a renowned mimic, but Frederick Locker-Lampson describes him as in appearance and bearing also ‘the typical horsey dragoon’ (Locker-Lampson, 314-15).In the spring of 1870 Lockhart's wife died, and on 7 June he entered the 2nd Royal Lanark militia as major. In July he was appointed the Times correspondent for the Franco-Prussian War. He was with the French army at the battle of Forbach, where he was frequently arrested and once almost executed owing to the fear of spies that the French had. This eventually caused them to ban foreign correspondents from their lines. However, shortly afterwards, Colonel Pemberton was killed by a stray bullet, and Lockhart succeeded him as correspondent with the Germans in the lines before Metz and the villages around Strasbourg. During this period he continued to write fiction. His second novel, Fair to See (1871), and his final one, Mine is thine (1878), were published in the same manner as his first, and each was generally agreed to be an improvement on the one before. The Times (18 September 1878) called him ‘humorous and thoughtful’ (The Times, 4).Conditions in the army were not good for Lockhart's health, and his chest was weakened. He was promoted lieutenant-colonel of the Lanark militia on 8 April 1877. From 1879 until his long-foreseen death he sought warm climates, and he died at Menton, France, on 23 March 1882. He was buried in the cemetery there.[Anon.], rev. Jessica Hinings

1.   International Genealogical Index. ( The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint, 1999-2008)
   Batch #: C115664, Sheet #: 00, Source Call #: 1041066, Printout Call #: 6900394, Dates: 181.