Locker married Lady Charlotte Bruce in 1850, and soon after left the service of Government. Thenceforward he appears to have led a very placid life, happy in his family, seeing much of his large circle of friends, devoted to poetry and book-collecting. “Lyra Elegantiarum” was published in 1867, “Patchwork” in 1879. In 1886 Locker published a catalogue of what he called the “Rowfant Library”—his collection of rare and valuable books (mostly the poetry of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) and autographs—of which Mr Andrew Lang has sung:
“The Rowfant books, how fair they shew, The Quarto quaint, the Aldine tall, Print, autograph, portfolio! Back from the outer air they call The athletes from the Tennis ball, This Rhymer from his rod and hooks, Would I could sing them, one and all, The Rowfant books!”
Locker’s first wife died in 1872. In 1874 he married Miss Lampson, adding her family name to his own. The rest of his life was spent for the most part at Rowfant: he died there, 30th May 1895. His autobiography, “My Confidences,” was published posthumously in 1896.
“I would build a cloudy house, For my thoughts to live in, When for earth too fancy loose, And too low for heaven!
Hush! I talk my dream alone: I build it bright to see; I build it on the moon-lit cloud, To which I look with thee!”
You shake your curls, and ask me why I don’t build castles in the sky; You smile, and you are thinking too, He’s nothing else on earth to do. It needs, my dear, romantic ware To raise such fabrics in the air— Ethereal bricks, and rainbow beams, The gossamer of Fancy’s dreams: And much the architect may lack Who labours in the zodiac To rear what I, from chime to chime, Attempted once upon a time.
My Castle was a glad retreat, Adorn’d with bloom and scented briars,— A Cupid’s model country-seat, With all that such a seat requires. A rustic thatch, a purple mountain, A sweet, mysterious, haunted fountain, A terraced lawn, a summer lake, By sun or moonbeam ever burnish’d; And then my cot, by some mistake, Unlike most cots was neatly furnish’d.
A trelliss’d porch, a mirror’d hall, A Hebe, laughing from the wall, Frail vases from remote Cathay,— While, under arms and armour wreath’d In trophied guise, the marble breath’d— A peering fawn, a startled fay.