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Male protagonist George Harcourt is son of an Englishman working as artist in Italy who weds a noblewoman there, she then dying when he is six; the father, offered a lucrative temporary position in Russia, leaves his son with his friends, the Mackenzies. They take the boy to Paris and put him in the Scotch College under Principle Douglas at the father's request. They hear Harcourt has lost the Czarina's favor and been executed. They ignore the boy, who is educated at Douglas' expense in part in military arts by the Count de St Mars. When Harcourt, seventeen, goes at Douglas' suggestion to ask the Mackenzies their advice for his future, they insult him and give him what they say remains of his patrimony - about 460 pounds. The Count gets him a job as private secretary to his nephew, who is the new governor of Martinique. Harcourt becomes engaged to Madame de Valcerne, the widow of the last governor; he is lured away from the wedding and dumped in Smyrna. On his way back to France - now 1790, in the throes of revolution - he meets Elton, his father's stepfather (he'd married our Harcourt's father's widowed mother). Elton, who calls George his own grandson, has George take his last name which will confuse enemies trying to trace him; George writes to but doesn't go to his fiancee, in case enemies are still able to interfere and because the Revolution has made travelling and being there dangerous.
A haughty heiress, Lady Juliana Valtravers, admires him but shuns him because he is a `citizen', Elton's money coming from trade. He and Elton rescue John Mackenzie, Harcourt's guardian's eldest son, who has been abandoned by the young man to whom he was companion on the Grand Tour; he is every way worthy, unlike most of his family. In Paris, Douglas says that another man has been seeking George and that his enemy was the Count de Breuil, rival for Madame de Valcerne, since executed - a good result of the revolution, he says. They go to England and encounter Madame de Valcerne and her (step)daughter, Albertine. Madame de Valcerne dies, leaving him eighteen thousand pounds per year and guardian of Albertine. They continue to London, wishing to send Albertine to France but unable to do so, given the Revolution and its aftermath. We later learn that Monsieur de Valcerne had earlier married a woman against his father's will when underage; the father had then dissolved the marriage and thrown the `wife' into a convent; she'd borne Albertine, whom Madame de Valcerne then adopted.
Mackenzie has been knighted. George goes to them disguised as a vagabond and they throw him out. Then he finds the man who had sought him. This is the Duke of Durham, his great uncle, George's mother being the duke's brother's daughter, who had wed Harcourt against her father's will. They had disliked this marriage because Harcourt's relatives had supported the Pretender. Our hero becomes the Duke's heir as well as Elton's and must change his name to Douglas. He helps Lady Isabella Kinross at a carriage accident and immediately loves her but learns he's perhaps the only person she may not wed, the Duke having duelled her father, who had lost the duel but won the mother through the woman's parents' desire. Lady Isabella is in the same boarding house in London as Albertine. Albertine loves George and shows it. He and Lady Isabella publish banns but the jealous Albertine lets Lady Isabella's father know. He carries her off but George gets her back and marries her; her father capitulates after George settles her fortune on her. Albertine elopes with the low life fortune-hunting Lord Fitzcarryl. He demands her fortune but George won't give it up unless he writes up settlements. Fitzcarryl insists on a duel and though George is nearly fatally wounded, he recovers; Fitzcarryl loses a leg. After George and Isabella try being helpful to the couple, Albertine allows herself to die. They remain helpful to Fitzcarryl, who is truly penitent. By this time, the Duke of Durham has died, so George is now duke. Albertine, in love with him from the outset, had plotted with de Breuil to have him taken from her stepmother's reach, not knowing he'd be taken from her reach too. The Count de St Mars has meanwhile come to England, driven from France because of the Revolution, and married Albertine's mother.
Harcourt - our hero's father - appears at the Mackenzies'; he'd been falsely imprisoned in Russia but then freed, make a baron, renamed Menzikow, and given an estate. They had met `Douglas' and note his `resemblance' to George but while each suspects that Douglas is George Harcourt, no-one admits this suspicion, even to one another. They tell Menzikow his son has been transported for theft and Menzikow falls ill. He is apparently dying and wants to revise his will to make the worthless Archy his heir. Fortunately, however, Elton, the duke, de St Mars, and Sir Charles show up and the truth comes out, including that the Mackenzies have pilfered thousands from their ward. They flee to France rather than pay it back; George remains friends with John, who disclaims his family. Fitzcarryl wants a wife for a domestic life, Sir Charles weds, the Mackenzies are chased in such haste from France by a mob thinking them supporters of the old regime that they arrive in England penniless and must retreat to Wales. Lady Juliana has eloped from her husband, but her lover refuses to marry her.
Many scenes make fun of the craven selfish Mackenzies & other vulgar, aggressive upstarts; another involves a friend of George's, Lord Valmont, who goes to his estate to see how things are being managed, fires his steward, equalizes all land and opportunities to sell, and takes up stewardship himself. He is thus offered as a model of fair governance. Almost all the worthy end up gaining titles and fortune, but the worthless are equally apt to have them: Lady Juliana, Mackenzie, and the man who abandons John Mackenzie during his Grand Tour.
© 1998 J A Shaffer / Sheffield Hallam University
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