Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lockhart, Laurence William Maxwell
LOCKHART, LAURENCE WILLIAM MAXWELL (1831–1882), novelist, born in 1831, was son of the Rev. Laurence Lockhart of Milton Lockhart, Lanarkshire, by his wife Louisa, daughter of David Blair, an East India merchant, of Glasgow. He was nephew of John Gibson Lockhart [q. v.] In 1841 he was sent to the school of Mr. Broughton at Newington House, near Edinburgh, where he made some lifelong friendships. After two or three years he returned home to be educated by a private tutor, and in 1845 he entered Glasgow University. He stayed there, with a year's interval, till in 1850 he entered Caius College, Cambridge. He graduated B.A. in 1855, and M.A. in 1861, and on 9 Feb. 1855 he 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 Balaclava on 15 Sept. 1855. He was made lieutenant on 4 Oct. He served in the trenches before Sebastopol during the following winter. In May 1856 the regiment returned to Gibraltar. Lockhart came to England upon sick leave in 1857. He joined the depot in Scotland, and during 1859 and 1860 held a regimental appointment at Reigate, and afterwards at Cambridge. In 1860 he married Katherine, daughter of Sir James Russell of Ashiestiel, by his wife Mary, daughter of Sir James and Lady Helen Hall of Dunglass. Mrs. Lockhart died in the spring of 1870. In 1862 Lockhart joined his regiment in India, whither it had been sent in 1858. He returned with it to England in 1863, and received his commission as captain on 19 Jan. 1864. He retired from the army in 1865, and devoted himself to literary work, contributing chiefly to ‘Blackwood's Magazine,’ in which he published three novels, ‘Doubles and Quits,’ ‘Fair to See,’ and ‘Mine is Thine.’ They were republished in 1869, 1871, and 1878 respectively. On 7 June 1870 he became major of the 2nd royal Lanark militia. In July he was appointed ‘Times’ correspondent for the Franco-German war. He was with the French army at the battle of Forbach. The French afterwards refused to allow foreign correspondents with their armies, and upon the death of Colonel Pemberton, Lockhart succeeded him as correspondent with the Germans. The hardships and exposure of an employment in which he took the liveliest interest laid the seeds of pulmonary disease. He became lieutenant-colonel of the Lanark militia on 8 April 1877. From 1879 symptoms of failing health forced him to try various climates, and he died at Mentone on 23 March 1882. He was buried in the cemetery there.
Lockhart was a man of very charming character, uniting singular unselfishness to unusual buoyancy of spirit, even to his last illness. His first novel was a ‘comedy of errors,’ bordering upon the farcical; in the later he was more serious in aim and careful in execution; but all showed the same qualities of great vivacity, combined with delicacy of perception and feeling for the refined and chivalrous.
[Information from his family; Blackwood's Mag. April 1882.]