There is very little evidence from his work that John Galt was in any way a romantic - evidence would show quite the opposite. In his novels, many of the marriages that take place are for purely practical or financial reasons. In the Annals of the Parish, the Rev Micah Balwhidder, after the death of his second wife recounts the the reasoning behind choosing his third -
"I was now far down in the vale of years, and could not expect to be long without feeling some of the penalties of old age, although I was still a hail and sound man. It therefore behoved me to look in time for a helpmate, to tend me in my approaching infirmities."
It comes as a bit of a surprise then to learn that in his own younger life, John Galt had a secret love! She was someone he met before his departure from Greenock to London in 1804.
The Greenock Advertiser published this article in December 1849, ten years after Galt's death -
"For half a century the late John Galt kept in his desk, never seen by human eye save his own, the miniature of a young lady who was, we may suppose, his first love. The likeness was taken when the lady was about to proceed to the south of England for the benefit of her health; but the hopes of lengthened days from the change of climate were doomed to be disappointed, as she there died.
During his varied career, our clever townsman seems ever to have retained fresh in his memory a tender recollection of her who first called forth his affection. Very shortly before his death, Mr Galt gave the portrait to his friends, with directions that it might be presented to some one of the relatives of the lady who had not any other remembrancer of her, and this wish was complied with."
It seems that John Galt also kept some verses which he wrote at the time. The article continues -
"It [the likeness] was accompanied by the following lines, which were
written on hearing of the lady’s decease.
They are chiefly remarkable as among the earliest, perhaps the very
earliest, effusions of Mr Galt."
The second verse of the poem reads -
"How sweet was that face and mild its expression,
As a lamb on the lea in the evening beam;
And kind was that heart, and soft its impression,So soft as the moonlight that sleeps on the stream."
"But consumption’s pale hand, with a touch cold and pining,
Has wasted those charms; on a strange distant shore
The lily was withered, wane and declining,
It bowed it sweet head, and it never rose more."
It would appear that John Galt's first love remained for a long time in his thoughts.
