G. A. Lawrence’s Guy Livingstone represents a briefly popular trend toward “manly” fiction. Its protagonist, as full of life and as hard as his surname suggests, embodies the masculine idea of strength unmitigated by any subtlety, particularly not in the area of intellect. Lawrence placed his protagonists in situations that could only be handled with brute strength and reckless bravado. Like many best-sellers of its time, Guy Livingstone depended on exaggeration and sensationalism for its appeal to both women and men; military men contributed greatly to its popularity. Not meant to teach any particular moral lesson, the book basically offers male-oriented entertainment with its violent male camaraderie. Lawrence used his novel, as he did his others, to express contempt for the clergy and others of the professional classes, particularly those engaged in private trade. His admiration for the military reflected his own brief experience in service with the Northampton Militia as a lieutenant.
Blessed with patrician courage, Livingstone remains ready to defend the weak against threat. He protects a schoolmate from a bully, frees him from the police following his innocent presence at a fight at Oxford, and combats a professional boxer, his grit and spirit bringing him, although an amateur, victory. In other parts of the novel, Livingstone crushes a silver cup with his bare hands, rides wild and unruly horses, and engages in various forms of combat, including the use of dueling pistols at fifteen paces, proving himself truly a man’s man. Lawrence reflects his own passionate and combative nature, having been part of a duel with the Duke of Wellington, whom he accused of “introduction of popery into every department of the state.”
Livingstone finds the promise of love with Constance Brandon, who represents the typical Victorian heroine in remaining helpless in the face of challenges to her well-being. Constance acts as foil for the decidedly more interesting and wicked adventurous Flora Bellasys. Constance’s very name suggests a dull stagnation, while Flora’s brings to mind color and vibrancy. Constance exemplifies the female virtue of chastity, while Flora exists to tempt men who readily fall victim to her beauty and charms. Guy gives in to that charm as “the fiery Livingstone blood, heated seven-fold by wine and passion, was surging through his veins like molten iron.” When Guy kisses Flora, Constance observes his betrayal, emitting a low “plaintive cry, such as might be wrung from the bravest of delicate women, in her extremity of pain, when stricken by a heavy brutal hand.”
Like his contemporary Benjamin Disraeli did in his novel Henrietta Temple (1837), Lawrence has his hero fall in love with two women. However, while Disraeli took the opportunity to moralize on the damaging effects of such involvement, Lawrence portrays Livingstone as troubled by no moral or civil laws.
Guy will reunite with Constance but only as she is dying from an attack of consumption that follows close upon their separation. A first letter she wrote to him mysteriously never arrives into his hands, and the second warns of her impending death. Colonel Mohun blames Flora, thinking “that handsome tiger-cat has laid her claw on it, I am certain.”
Guy rushes to London to Constance’s side, his journey filled with foreshadowing imagery of dark skies and “foul weather.” After a soulful reunion, the “two parted, to meet again—upon earth, never any more,” allowing Guy to bear up under tremendous challenge and tragedy. As he travels home “the brain fever was coming on fast,” and he takes to “the sick-bed of delirium.” His mother nurses him back to health, withholding the news of Constance’s death until he recovers. After his recovery, he resists Flora’s attentions and travels to Italy, but takes a fall from a horse while in mid-hunt, loses the use of his legs, and after being robbed of his virility, succumbs to life’s challenges in a melodramatic death scene in the company of Frank, his best friend.
Feminist critics find the female characters of interest for their portrayal of types—not only Constance and Flora, but also Lady Caroline Desborough, mentioned in a story within the main story as part of a cautionary tale, and Cornelia, who verbally attacks members of her own gender. Lady Caroline falls in love outside her loveless marriage with Colonel Mohun, runs away with him, then conveniently dies, to be remarked upon by another female character, Cornelia, as “rightly served . . . such women ought to be miserable.”
While not read in later decades, books such as Guy Livingstone acted as prototypes of the later pure adventure novel that would introduce romance and, eventually, allow their masculine protagonists a weakness or two to make them more realistic. It proved so popular that Lawrence’s additional works generally bore the subtitle “by the author of Guy Livingstone.” Not until the 1880s did the Aesthetic Movement challenge the popular portrait of the aristocratic militaristic athlete, introducing more cultured, mature, and intellectual heroes. The novel produced several “literary descendants,” according to Anthony Powell, including works by English writers Louise de la Ramé, popularly known as Ouida, and Rudyard Kipling, as well as the American novelist Ernest Hemingway, all of whom focused on “hard” men.
Bibliography
Fleming, Gordon H. George Alfred Lawrence and the Victorian Sensational Novel. Tucson: University of Arizona, 1952.
Kaye-Smith, Sheila. Introduction to Guy Livingstone, by George Lawrence. London: Elkin Mathews & Marrot, 1928, vii–ix.
Powell, Anthony. Introduction to Novels of High Society from the Victorian Age. London: Pilot Press, 1947, vii–xv.
Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis
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