 Alfred Salteena is a middle-aged ironmonger in Victorian England, prosperous but unmarried and lonely. Commuting home one day by train, he meets Ethel Monticue, a young woman with whom he instantly falls in love. Ethel is fascinated by high society and longs to mix with the aristocracy. In order to impress her, Alfred writes to his old friend Lord Bernard Clark, and manages to get them an invitation to Bernard s stately home in the country. Bernard is a lonely middle-aged bachelor like Alfred (but of much higher social standing) and the ambitious Ethel instantly sets her cap at him. Under the hostile glare of Bernard s servants, the gauche, clumsy Alfred makes every possible gaffe in etiquette, turning up to breakfast in his dressing gown and not knowing which cutlery to use on lobster. Before he can ask Ethel for her hand, Alfred feels he needs to brush up his manners. Bernard puts him in touch with the Earl of Clincham, a drunken, impecunious aristocrat who runs a training-school for gentlemen and can procure him an introduction to the Prince of Wales. Alfred sets off for London to submit himself to the school s boot-camp-style discipline, oblivious to Bernard s burgeoning attraction to Ethel, and Ethel s burning desire to be a duchess.