"The passage in prose which I always take as a working model... occurs in a story by de Maupassant called 'La Reine Hortense.' I spent, I suppose, a great part of ten years in grubbing up facts about Henry VIII. I worried about his parentage, his diseases, the size of his shoes, the price he gave for kitchen implements, his relation to his wives, his knowledge of music, his proficiency with the bow. I amassed, in short, a great deal of information about Henry VIII... I then wrote three long novels all about that Defender of the Faith. But I really know -- so delusive are reported facts -- nothing whatever. Not one single thing! Should I have found him affable, or terrifying, or seductive, or royal, or courageous? There are so many contradictory facts; there are so many reported interviews, each contradicting the other, so that really all that I know about this king could be reported in the words of Maupassant, which, as I say, I always consider as a working model. Maupassant is introducing one of his characters, who is possibly gross, commercial, overbearing, insolent; who eats, possibly, too much greasy food; who wears commonplace clothes -- a gentleman about whom you might write volumes if you wanted to give the facts of his existence. But all that de Maupassant finds it necessary to say is: 'C'était un monsieur à favoris rouges qui entrait toujours le premier.'
"And that is all that I know about Henry VIII -- that he was a gentleman with red whiskers who always went first through a door."
-- From
"On Impressionism," by Ford Madox Hueffer.
In POETRY AND DRAMA Volume II, edited by Harold Munro. The Poetry Bookshop, London, 1914.
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