JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART, LL.D.
PAINTED BY SIR FRANCIS GRANT P.R.A.
A review of these pamphlets in Tait’s Magazine for 1839 states that Lockhart “had done gross and, everything considered, pitiful injustice to Mr. James Ballantyne; but, in our opinion, the case stood still worse as to Dr. John Leyden, Thomas Pringle, the Ettrick Shepherd, Alister Campbell and other men of genius, who had no sons or friendly trustees to do justice to their true characters, and defend their memories from clumsy ridicule, and wanton and unprovoked misrepresentation.... The editor of the Quarterly (Lockhart) has been as condescending in the free use of abusive and insolent language, and in calling names and giving nicknames, as the veriest Grub Street author could desire; and, all the while, this vulgarity is directed against persons whom he assumes to treat as immeasurably his inferiors. The trustees, whether tradesmen or professional men, though sufficiently acute and cutting at times, have a manifest advantage over Mr. Lockhart, in never abandoning that decent propriety of language which they owed to themselves, if not to their supercilious and unceremonious adversary; while they have carefully and ably elaborated every point in Mr. Lockhart’s statements, and knocked them down one by one....
“For the unfounded assertions in the earlier volumes regarding the Ballantynes, Mr. Lockhart makes a sort of amende honorable: ‘I have been entirely mistaken, if those to whom I allude (Ballantyne’s relatives), or any other of my readers, have interpreted any expressions of mine as designed to cast the slightest imputation upon the moral rectitude of the elder Ballantyne. I believe James to have been from first to last a perfectly upright man; that his principles were of a lofty stamp—his feelings pure even to simplicity.’... It was sufficiently proved from the documents given in the controversy that on all occasions he (Scott) made use of James Ballantyne & Co. as the means of supplying his wants. If he wanted money, and they happened to have it, he drew it out; if not, he made use of their firm to raise it. Such was his uniform practice, from the first formation of the company to the last day of its existence.”[40]
John Gibson Lockhart died at Abbotsford on the 25th November 1854, in his sixty-first year. “In a letter addressed to me,” says Dr. Charles Rogers, “a few days afterwards, Mr. Robert Chambers referred to the event in these words: ‘It is melancholy to think of Lockhart sinking at sixty—and all through heart-break. Sir Adam Ferguson feels assured that such is the remote but true cause of his death. He was perhaps the least amiable man of letters I ever knew; but these considerations make his departure somewhat touching.’
“Naturally a cynic, Lockhart was latterly prone to irritation; he possessed that unhappy temperament which magnifies trifles and distorts judgment. His perversity is in a measure illustrated by his harsh treatment of James Hogg; it was wholly unexpected by the Shepherd’s family, who supplied him with papers, and to whom his visits had (as Mrs. Hogg assured me) been frequent and cordial. But Archibald Constable and the brothers Ballantyne he cruelly wronged. By Sir Walter Scott they were loved and trusted; and his biographer had no cause to heap censures on their memory. That Sir Walter’s character might appear bright and pure, it was unnecessary that his associates should be charged with baseness.
“The detractor succeeds at the outset. Lockhart, who, as has been shown by an unprejudiced witness, Mrs. Gordon, in the life of her father (Christopher North), was not unwilling to inflict pain, succeeded in deeply wounding the families of Constable and the Ballantynes. But the day of reparation came. The Ballantynes were vindicated at once, and the censorious vehemence with which Lockhart returned to the charge invoked wide disapproval. In 1873 appeared a memoir of Archibald Constable by his son; in the third volume of that work the great bookseller obtains full and complete exculpation.”[41]
Sir Walter Scott contributed not only capital to the firm, but great literary influence, which attracted a copious supply of work to the Ballantyne Press; yet the other partners were not very far behind him in their influence upon the business. In addition to some capital, James Ballantyne brought what in many ways was as important, experience in literary matters and great talent as a practical printer, while John’s pleasant manners and social accomplishments must have gained not a few customers for the house. It cannot be denied that Sir Walter had a chief share in maintaining the firm, for he always insisted that his own works should be printed there, no matter who the publishers were; but he was also largely responsible for the collapse, owing to those unsuccessful publications previously referred to, which through his influence had been printed by the firm. Moreover, his excessive desire for family aggrandisement and his profuse baronial hospitality were extremely unfortunate for all concerned; and before the collapse came he had spent £29,000 on land alone, while his expenditure on house and grounds was estimated at £76,000.
The following observations are from one who was acquainted with all the circumstances: “It is a curious instance of Lockhart’s moral obtuseness that he could make some most painful and needless disclosures in regard to Scott himself in that Life (of Scott), to say nothing of his foul and elaborate misrepresentation of the Ballantynes throughout. To that evil deed it is necessary only to refer; for the confutation immediately published was so complete, and the establishment of the fair fame of the Ballantynes so triumphant, that their libeller had his punishment very soon. Some lovers of literature and of Scott still struggled to make out that the Ballantynes and their defenders, as tradesmen, could know nothing of the feelings, nor judge of the conduct, of Scott as a gentleman. The answer was plain: the Ballantynes were not mere tradesmen; and if they had been, Scott made himself a tradesman, in regard to his coadjutors, and must be judged by the laws of commercial integrity. The exposures made by the Ballantynes and their friends of Scott’s pecuniary obligations to them were forced upon them by Lockhart’s attacks upon their characters and misrepresentation of their conduct and affairs. The whole controversy was occasioned by Lockhart’s spontaneous indulgence in caustic satire; and the Ballantynes came better out of it than either he or his father in-law.”[42]