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By Root 7047 0

the legation attaché was again called to the aid of an English civilian. The Federal security measures implemented after Mosby’s raid had snared another victim. George Alfred Lawrence was famous throughout England as the author of Guy Livingstone. Published in 1857, the novel eulogized a handsome daredevil Guards officer who defies social convention to the point of blackguardism but ultimately knows right from wrong. Five years later, Lawrence’s dashing alter ego still haunted its sedentary creator. In December 1862, Lawrence shocked his wife and friends by announcing his intention to serve as a volunteer staff officer to General Lee. In contrast to the devil-may-care Guy, Lawrence had carefully planned his adventure. He obtained highly laudatory letters of introduction, including one from James Mason, made financial provisions for his family, and secured an appointment from the Morning Post as its Southern correspondent.

Lawrence was greeted with adulation by the young attachés at the legation. Lord Lyons invited him to dinner, although he was not as taken with the author as his impressionable staff, one of whom supplied Lawrence with the address of the ever-obliging pro-Southern journalist W. W. Glenn. This time, however, Glenn regretted his involvement; Lawrence was captured on April 10 a few miles from the last Federal outpost in Greenland County, West Virginia. He was high-handed with his Federal interrogator and melodramatically refused to answer questions except to say “I am the author of Guy Livingstone and other works of fiction, I took no letters from Baltimore to carry and none were found on me.”

According to the army report, hidden among Lawrence’s personal belongings was a letter from Mr. Glenn giving directions on where to find his guide, “and the route to take, the persons to trust and to avoid … it reflects a disloyal and traitorous light.” There was also a scurrilous verse in his handwriting: “Jeff Davis rides a white horse, Abe rides a mule, Davis is a gentleman, Abe a fool.” William Seward was robustly unsympathetic when Lord Lyons wrote to him about releasing Lawrence from the Old Capitol prison.

The publicity attending Lawrence’s arrest was deeply embarrassing for Lord Lyons. He also feared what the English papers would say once it became known that the “author of Guy Livingstone” was being held in prison without charge. Despite persistent prodding by Lyons to bring Lawrence to trial or else release him, Seward did nothing for two months. The secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, insisted that Seward make an example of Lawrence and showed his anger by refusing to grant any more passes to British military observers, including Lieutenant Colonel James Eli Crowther, who had been sent by the British Army as an official observer.19.1

George Lawrence whiled away his time in prison writing irritable letters to Lyons swearing that there was not “a shadow of foundation” to the charge he had sought to join the Confederacy. The attachés visited him weekly bearing little care packages, which the guards kept for themselves. Lawrence loathed his loquacious cellmate, whose “narrative riches about matched those of the knife-grinder.”5 His sole consolation, he wrote, was the occasional sight of a beautiful female prisoner who once threw him a white rose from her window. Apart from this innocent little romance, Lawrence kept to himself. When Seward finally ordered his release in June, Lawrence returned to New York a chastened man. Henceforth he would continue his campaign against the North from the safety of his study.

Lord Lyons might have been more persuasive with Seward if Lawrence’s arrest had not coincided with that of another adventure-hungry Briton. Twenty-year-old Alfred Rubery was one of life’s nincompoops. The death of his father, John, the largest umbrella manufacturer in Birmingham, had given him a modest independence. Leaving his older brother to manage the family business, Alfred went to San Francisco in the summer of 1862 with dreams of making his fortune in mining. He had not been in the city for long