I think she was a little too imaginative and energetic for her own good. After all, it was her insistence on perfecting position number eighty-three that finally did her in.
You may be familiar with said position. It's the one in which one partner hangs from the candelabra and the other one swings upside-down from the bed canopy, chanting: "Is this a dagger I see before me, the handle towards my hand?" I think that if the smutty bits were toned down and a bit of action and drama added, it'd probably make a pretty good play.
According to Kildare (the court doctor), position number eighty-three (in small doses) is very good for the spine, but do it too often and (as my dear Jane found out) something just has to give. They just don't make candelabras or bed canopies like they used to, do they?
It's put me right off Tudor furniture, I can tell you. I simply refuse to buy the stuff now, family business or not. Anyway, all that black wood gets a chap down after a while. Not at all like stripped pine. Okay, it's for peasants (rustic, they call it), but at least you don't get woodworm - they won't go near the stuff.
On a more positive note, Jane did manage to bear me the son and heir that I so desperately wanted and, although she has now shuffled off this mortal coil, little Eddy, I hear, is doing just fine.
I say "hear" because although he's over a year old, I haven't actually seen him yet. This is mainly due to the fact that I've been kept very busy supervising the female workers who are doing the extensive repair work on the candelabra and bed canopy. However, I do intend to try and see more of him in the near future.
Anyway, if you should happen to come across another one like Jane, please have her scrubbed and sent up to the house. You know the address.
Your King
Henry.
P.S. Regardless of what you might have heard me say publicly, I don't actually have anything against big-breasted King-worshipping nymphomaniacs, as long as they are, of course, the faithful type.
Dear Find-A-Wife Dating Agency
You sneaky buggers! Anne looked great in that grossly-exaggerated and, may I say (of course I may - I am King after all) highly deceptive portrait you sent me a few months ago. However, in the flesh (and unfortunately I do mean that literally) it (and I mean that literally too) was an entirely different story. If I say that Anne would have given the back end of my Royal carriage a run for its money, perhaps you'll begin to have some idea of what I had to reluctantly wake up to every morning.
And as for that talent-free idiot Holbien! Well, I'm almost stuck for words. At present, he's swanning around the place telling everyone who'll listen that he's the official court artist. After taking a look at his portrait of Anne, I'm beginning to think that there's something wrong with his eyes. It could be that he's shortsighted - which would perhaps explain why he keeps nicking my monogrammed towels from the bathroom. All I can say on the matter is if Anne's portrait is an example of his best work, then he ought to sod off back to Germany and stay there.
Also, whilst I'm not one to criticize your fine service, I do think you were scraping the bottom of the barrel a bit with Anne, don't you?
I mean, I'm sure that with a lot of patient tutoring, she could have become a very nice person, perhaps even warm, but I just didn't have the time or the inclination to teach her. After spending nine and a half weeks with her, I found that she wasn't the type of woman I wanted to cleave to for the rest of my natural life.
Talk about the face that sunk a thousand ships! No wonder my Naval fleet wouldn't set sail for the Netherlands on time. And while we're on the subject of the Netherlands, let me tell you (in the strictest confidence) that when it came to bedchamber time, I had a bit of trouble raising the old main mast myself, if you catch my drift. Mind you, after a few gins she didn't seem so bad, and after I'd quaffed a few myself, she looked almost passable in a dimly lit room. Still, that's another story entirely and thankfully one that's safely ensconced in the past now.
