Lauder

Lauder, SIR THOMAS DICK, Bart., was born in 1784, the eldest son of Sir Andrew Lauder of Fountainhall, Haddingtonshire. He served for a time in the 26th (Cameronian) regiment, succeeded to the baronetcy in 1820, and lived at the Grange, near Edinburgh, from 1831 until his death on 29th May 1848. For the last nine years of his life he was secretary to the Board of Manufactures and of Fisheries. Of Lauder's two romances, The Wolfe of Badenoch and Lochandhu, the former is still a popular book. His best works are not these, however, but his Morayshire Floods (1830) and, especially, Scottish Rivers, which was appearing in Tait's Magazine when his death cut the series of papers short. His Legendary Tales of the Highlands (3 vols. 1841) may also be mentioned. In politics a Liberal, and of unwearying public spirit, Lauder was in private a lovable and accomplished gentleman. Lord Cockburn, who describes him as 'the greatest favourite with the mob that the Whigs have,' says: 'Lauder could make his way in the world as a player, or a ballad-singer, or a street fiddler, or a geologist, or a civil engineer, or a surveyor, and easily and eminently as an artist or a layer-out of ground.' See Dr John Brown's preface to the reprint of Scottish Rivers (1874).