Frederick Locker-Lampson Correspondence

Frederick Locker-Lampson was born Frederick Locker at the Royal Naval Hospital in 1821, the third child of Edward Hawke Locker, the civil commissioner for the hospital. He was educated at several preparatory schools before becoming a junior clerk in a colonial broker's office in 1837. From 1841 to 1849 he held a series of offices with the Admiralty, including deputy reader and précis writer for Lord Haddington. He received a leave of absence for health reasons in May 1849, and began extensive travels in Europe.

On July 4,1850, Locker married Lady Charlotte Christian Bruce, a daughter of the Earl of Elgin and a friend of Queen Victoria. They had one daughter, Eleanor, who in 1878 married Lionel Tennyson, the son of the poet. Locker retired from government service, and despite his continued poor health was a member of several London clubs; his literary friends included Thackeray, Tennyson, Trollope, Kinglake, Lamartine, Lord Lytton, and George Eliot. He also collected fine and rare books, particularly Elizabethan imprints, Louis XVI furniture, and Chinese porcelain. The Lockers often summered at Frogmore House, one of the royal retreats.

In 1857 he published his first and only collection of original verse, London Lyrics, a ninety page volume that received several editions during his lifetime. Lyra elegantiarum, an anthology of occasional verse, appeared in 1867. Lady Charlotte Bruce Locker died in 1872, and in 1874 Locker married Hannah Jane Lampson, a children's author who was also the heiress of Sir Curtis Miranda Lampson of Rowfant, first baronet. The couple had four children, two sons and two daughters.

Locker published Patchwork, a collection of extracts he referred to as his "little Commonplace-Book," in 1879. His father-in-law died in 1885, and Locker took the name Lampson in order to inherit the family estates. Locker-Lampson settled at Rowfant, and in 1886 privately published The Rowfant Library, A Catalogue. Edited by Alfred W. Pollard and R. H. Lister, the catalogue described the books, manuscripts, autographs, and works of art owned by Locker-Lampson. In the same year, his son-in-law Lionel Tennyson died of jungle fever during his voyage home from India. Two years later, Eleanor Locker Tennyson married the literary critic and politician Augustine Birrell.

Frederick Locker-Lampson died at Rowfant on May 30th, 1895. A volume of memoirs and genealogical information, My Reminiscences, was published in 1896, edited by Augustine Birrell, who also compiled a list of Locker-Lampson's late additions to his library. The Rowfant Library itself was sold to an American bookdealer, almost certainly Robert Dodd, in 1905.