Algernon Swinburne

At the wonderful Public Domain Review, Julian Barnes tells the story of when Guy de Maupassant met Algernon Swinburne, over lunch at the Normandy home of a man Swinburne was visiting named Powell.

Actually, there were three lunches. Here’s how the second one went:

Maupassant accepted a second invitation to lunch a few days later. This passed more peacefully, since the intrusive monkey was now dead, hanged from a tree by the young servant. Powell had ordered a huge block of granite for its tomb. At the end of the meal the two visionaries gave the Frenchman some liquor which nearly knocked him out; taking fright, he fled back to his hotel.

And there was still one lunch to go ….