[5][note 2] In 1849 Whyte-Melville was the subject of a summons for maintenance by Elizabeth Gibbs, described as "a smartly-dressed and interesting looking young woman", who alleged that he was the father of her son.

[9] The Magistrate found for the defendant as the written evidence could not be proved to be in Whyte-Melville's hand, but allowed the complainant to apply for a further summons in order to obtain proof.

[9] Gibbs testified that since the child was born, she had received £10 from Whyte-Melville, and he had offered her two sums of £5, on condition that she surrender his letters to her, and sign a disclaimer on further claims.

Most of his heroes and heroines – Digby Grand, Tilbury Nogo, the Honourable Crasher, Mr Sawyer, Kate Coventry, Mrs Lascelles – ride to hounds, or are would-be members of the hunt.

It centres on an urban recluse living in a small, modern villa in a London cul de sac, looking out on "the dead wall at the back of an hospital".

In 1876, Whyte-Melville penned the rarely attributed, but widely recognized opening line to the short poem The Object of a Life: "To eat, drink, and be merry, because to-morrow we die.

[18][19][5] The Dublin Evening Mail said that it was "strange that he, so gallant and accomplished a horseman, who had dared danger with a light heart so often, should have perished, not while jumping a difficult fence, but simply while galloping across a ploughed field.

These lines are from the Scattered Scarlet anthology of 1923: At the instigation of Whyte-Melville's mother, Lady Catherine Melville, a memorial fountain to him was erected by public subscription in Market Street, St Andrews, Fife, in 1880.

A local councillor and the St Andrews Merchants' Association led a campaign that ended in its resuming function as a fountain on Wednesday 8 July 2015.

[25] The novelist Rosemary Sutcliff said in her memoir Blue Remembered Hills (1983)[26] that her first complete (and unpublished) novel Wild Sunrise was 'as Victorian-English as anything in Whyte-Melville's The Gladiators'.

[6]: xix Whyte-Melville's "Riding Recollections", essentially a manual of horsemanship, was a popular work widely cited as an authority in the following decades.

[35] Illustrations by Edgar Giberne (24 June 1850 – 21 September 1889) for the 1878 edition of "Riding Recollections" (Chapman and Hall, London) by Whyte-Melville (1821–1878) By courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Illustrations by Hugh Thomson (1 June 1860 – 7 May 1920) for the 1898 edition of "Riding Recollections" (W. Thacker, London) by Whyte-Melville by courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library.