Barren Honour

An old family with a name, a mortgaged estate and no money at all; a self-made man who can buy it; and a daughter who is the only asset left. Lawrence gave up the bar after Guy Livingstone made him famous in 1857 and launched a fashion for heroes who break bones and horses — here the muscle is gone and what is left is the arithmetic of a barren honor. He later ran the blockade to reach the Confederacy and was arrested for it. Fifty-seven plates of hunting, battle and portrait painting, among them works by John Ferneley and Horace Vernet, run from 1821 to 1900 and carry the same strain of contested honour the novel's mortgaged estate is built on.