Cowardice Court
1906
A deliciously waspish comedy of manners set in the friction between old English privilege and American pluck. When Lord Bazelhurst discovers that audacious American landowner Randolph Shaw has been fishing on what the aristocrat claims as his waters, a feud erupts that reveals far more about the hollowness of English dignity than about anybody's fishing rights. McCutcheon skewers the puffed-up absurdity of titled nobility while allowing his rough-hewn American to be neither saint nor simpleton. The true revelation comes in the form of Penelope, Lord Bazelhurst's sister, whose clear-eyed view of her brother's cowardice proves far more incisive than any legal brief. What begins as a property dispute becomes a sharp examination of where true courage actually lives and who has the audacity to name it. The prose crackles with period wit, and the cultural commentary remains surprisingly fresh a century later, exposing the arbitrary nature of class pretension with affectionate mockery.
