Bayard from Bengal

A Indian gentleman arrives in Victorian London with impeccable English and absolutely no idea what he's gotten himself into. Chunder Bindabun Bhosh, B.A., has absorbed every scrap of British culture he could find, and he deploys his flawless manners and earnest enthusiasm with spectacularly catastrophic results. Whether he's attempting to rescue damsels from bulls, navigating the treacherous waters of upper-class dinner parties, or falling desperately in love, every situation spirals into magnificent disaster. F. Anstey wrote this comic masterpiece under the pseudonym Hurry Bungsho Jabberjee, and the satire cuts both ways: Bhosh's desperate attempts to be English reveal as much about English pretensions as about the man trying to inhabit them. The comedy of errors unfolds with a gentle kindness toward its hero, making his pratfalls oddly endearing rather than cruel. It's a fascinating relic of late-Victorian entertainment, a time when readers could laugh at the foibles of empire without quite recognizing what they were laughing at.