Lord Dunbeg

Dunbeg arrives in Washington among the visiting English nobility, an Earl whose polite bewilderment makes him perfect prey for Victoria Dare's experiments in impudence. He gamely attempts to lay down rules for choosing a Countess and confesses he would rather be George Washington than an Earl, only to be told he has not the air of wishing it and that his hero was a rawboned, illiterate, tipsy farmer. His patient confusion dramatizes the collision between European title and American self-invention that runs through the novel's social comedy.