Colonial society did not suit him.

Colonial manners were not to his mind.

But to meet governing men, like Sir Henry Norman, a "warm Gladstonian," by the way, was always a pleasure to him, and as a symbol of England's greatness he loved her territory beyond the seas.
The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, published in 1889, was Froude's one mature and serious attempt at a novel.

For distinction of style and beauty of thought it may be compared with the greatest of historical romances.

If it was the least successful of his books, the failure can be assigned to the absence of women, or at least of love, which ever since Dr.Johnson's definition, if not before, has been expected in a novel.