 While he came from middle-class and provincial beginnings (seen from the perspective of European polite society) he worked very hard to gain access to all levels of society, and the settings of his fiction range from working class to aristocratic, and often describe the efforts of middle-class Americans to make their way in European capitals.He confessed he got some of his best story ideas from gossip at the dinner table or at country house weekends.He worked for a living, however, and lacked the experiences of select schools, university, and army service, the common bonds of masculine society.