



Produced by John Stuart Middleton





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.
