| Description | Letter to Alexander Macdonald of Kepplestone from Robert Thom [?] 7, Randolph Crescent, Edinburgh, explaining that Thomas Carlyle and David Laing are currently in dispute over reliable portraits of John Knox: 'The one in Lodge is undoubtedly spurious, being from a portrait at Holyrood, not of Knox but of a Master of Works who died in 1580!', Laing is in favour of an engraving in Dr. McCrie's Life of Knox, which was taken from a portrait in Calder House belonging to Lord Torphichen, and looks like a woodcut published in Geneve in 1580, Carlyle prefers a head belonging to Lord Somerville, but Laing says that that one dates from the time of Cromwell, Fordyce told Thom that the late Mr. Thomson of Banchory claimed to be a descendant of Knox and had his watch and portrait, apparently bequeathed to the Marischal College Museum, Aberdeen, asks if Macdonald would enquire as to whether it would be possible to have a photograph of the portrait, [George Washington] Wilson would probably be the best to do it, asks too for advice for a friend who owns 600 acres in Northamptonshire and would like some polled Aberdeen heifers to cross with a shorthorn bull, and whether or not Mr. Martin of Aberdeen, who has won prizes for his cattle, would be able to help, the International exhibition this year was poor, but the Royal Academy was good, the Old Watercolour Society had a few very good paintings, and the French and Belgian exhibition in Pall Mall was excellent, managed to resist buying some good things at Christie's, 'like my own things better on coming home', 7 May 1874 |