Francis Napier, 10th Lord Napier and 1st Baron Ettrick c.200 letters to Miss Lockwood, 19th century

NAPIER, FRANCIS, 10TH LORD NAPIER AND 1ST BARON ETTRICK

Series of about 130 letters to Anne Lockwood ("Nina", "Wifie"), before and after their marriage

including near-daily love letters written in the months before their marriage, discussing preparations for their life together, for instance spending a day sorting through boxes of "condemned Books" ("...I delight in diving and revelling among heaps of unknown books and I became warmly interested in my task as out of the maze there grew a plan and low rows of well marshalled tomes covered the temporary shelves...", 24 July 1845) as well as events touching on his diplomatic career and public affairs such as the death of Lord Grey ("...I do not love the mighty partizans of the end of the last century and what most redeems them is their transcendent genius; Lord Grey, the last relic of the school, had all their bitterness exclusiveness and party rage and but half their ability...", 21 July 1845), the later letters chiefly written when in London or Edinburgh on political business ("...I had a very long & interesting conversation with Sir W.V. Harcourt about the Crofter Question..."), including the Third Reform Act of 1884 ("...The rejection of the suffrage Bill has completely disjointed & dissolved the whole frame of political life. It really has to be seen whether there is really a genuine sense of indignation among the mass of the people...", 10 July 1884), as well as personal affairs ("...went to lunch at the Primroses by invitation and met an old gentleman called Abbott who has a fine collection of drawings by the Italian Masters..."), altogether in excess of 800 pages, 4to and 8vo, London, Edinburgh, and elsewhere, 1845-1880s (many undated), the series disordered and some letters possibly incomplete

These letters commence in 1845 when Francis Napier, 10th Lord Napier (1819-98), was about to marry Anne Jane Charlotte Lockwood, known as Nina. She was the daughter of Captain Robert Manners Lockwood and Lady Julia Lockwood (daughter of the 2nd Earl of Arran). Her mother had left her abusive husband earlier in the 1840s, and she and her daughter were living in Malta, so the early letters include much discussion of plans for their coming life together in Britain. In the years that followed Napier had a successful diplomat career including the ambassadorship in Berlin and St Petersburg, the governorship of Madras and, in 1872, a brief temporary tenure as viceroy of India. These letters resume after the Napiers' return to Britain. They are chiefly written when Napier and Ettrick (as he was now titled) was away from his seat at Thirlestane Castle on political business in Edinburgh or at the House of Lords. Napier was appointed by Gladstone as chair of an inquiry into the condition of Crofters in the Highlands and Islands, and issues around crofters (such as their political enfranchisement) are threaded through these letters. 

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