The Sea-Hawk

by Rafael Sabatini




NOTE

Lord Henry Goade, who had, as we shall see, some personal acquaintance
with Sir Oliver Tressilian, tells us quite bluntly that he was
ill-favoured. But then his lordship is addicted to harsh judgments
and his perceptions are not always normal. He says, for instance, of
Anne of Cleves, that she was the "ugliest woman that ever I saw." As
far as we can glean from his own voluminous writings it would seem to
be extremely doubtful whether he ever saw Anne of Cleves at all, and we
suspect him here of being no more than a slavish echo of the common
voice, which attributed Cromwell's downfall to the ugliness of this
bride he procured for his Bluebeard master. To the common voice from
the brush of Holbein, which permits us to form our own opinions and
shows us a lady who is certainly very far from deserving his lordship's
harsh stricture. Similarly, I like to believe that Lord Henry was
wrong in his pronouncement upon Sir Oliver, and I am encouraged in this
belief by the pen-portrait which he himself appends to it. "He was,"
he says, "a tall, powerful fellow of a good shape, if we except that
his arms were too long and that his feet and hands were of an uncomely
bigness. In face he was swarthy, with black hair and a black forked
beard; his nose was big and very high in the bridge, and his eyes sunk
deep under beetling eyebrows were very pale-coloured and very cruel and
sinister. He had--and this I have ever remarked to be the sign of