The Patrician

A rising politician of a great Whig family falls in love with a woman living apart from her husband, and his career, his party and his relations all quietly explain to him what is possible. Galsworthy was a barrister who never practiced and had befriended Joseph Conrad, then first mate of the ship carrying him home from Australia; this 1911 novel is his coldest look at his own class - the aristocrats are decent, intelligent, and immovable. Fifty-six plates of dinner parties, tea parties, and portraits by painters including Henry Sargent and Philip de László give a face to the governing class Galsworthy dissects.