Monsieur Beaucaire

What if the most honest man in England were a French barber pretending to be a duke? This sparkling Edwardian comedy follows Beaucaire, a French nobleman reduced to shaving customers in a London barbershop, who blackmails a dissolute duke into presenting him as a gentleman to a wealthy heiress in Bath. The scheme works beautifully until it doesn't: rivals conspire to expose him, assassination attempts follow, and Beaucaire must calculate exactly how much scandal his beloved can stomach. Tarkington's wit crackles through every exchange, exposing the absurd pretensions of English high society while delivering the pure pleasure of a perfectly constructed romance. The ending arrives like a perfectly timed punchline. This is sophisticated fun for readers who want their comedies literate and their romantic entanglements tangled.