The Transformation of Phillip Jettan by Georgette Heyer, The Register, Adelaide (1923)

‘A Comedy of Manners’ is appended as a sub-title to the tale of handsome Philip’s transformation, and comedy indeed it is. The comedy of a youth of the mid eighteenth century who transformed himself from a country bumpkin into a very polished man of the world—setting all Paris agog in the space of a brief six months, ogling and duelling and ruffling with the best of them, to the confusion of his lady and the amazement of his social sponsors and instructors. Philip is English by birth and French by pose and partial adoption, and with Monsieur Beaucaire of happy memory it was the other way about, but for all that there is often more than a hint of Beaucaire in Philip— once, indeed, a speech and situation that are almost literally Beaucaire. But Beaucaire was loveable enough to make welcome secure for his followers, and doubtless Mr. Tarkington will take the resemblance as that imitation (if imitation it be) which is the sincerest flattery.