weird incident

from the youth of Guy de Maupassant:

“In October 1868 at the age of 18 he saved the famous poet Algernon Charles Swinburne from drowning off the coast of Étretat at Normandy.”

It reminds me of the time I first read the Lingis translation of Klossowski’s Sade, My Neighbor, and read, in the final sentence of the translator’s introduction:

“[Klossowski’s] brother is the celebrated painter Balthus.”

Not that it wasn’t a well-known fact, it simply wasn’t known to me at the time.

Am I remembering correctly that there is a hilarious portrayal of Swinburne in The Education of Henry Adams? (I must admit to not having been able to finish the Adams book, much though I like him as a historian. In the Education book, he revels in his sense of class entitlement, and is proud of doing so. I simply didn’t like the man enough to finish his memoir, highly regarded though it is.)