Maupassant never doubted that Swinburne was a genius. "He is a poet of exalted and frenzied lyricism, who is not in the least interested in the humble, decent reality which contemporary French artists obstinately and patiently seek; rather he strives to depict dreams and subtle thoughts which are sometimes ingenious and grand, sometimes inflated, but even so magnificent." And it was the same when other British writers and artists of the time came up for French description and judgment. The French expected them to behave in peculiar ways, but declined to allow amusement or shock at their habits to affect aesthetic judgment. Jacques-Emile Blanche wrote of Sickert living in Dieppe for "thirty years, married, divorced, remarried, widower, or about to remarry", moving between smart society and the obscure lodgings he shared with a red-haired fishmongress, and doing crazy things such as cutting off his hair to surprise a small girl; and in all those 30 years nobody ever saw him paint. None of this stopped the French accepting him as a true Dieppois and a true artist: "He was to be the painter of Dieppe. No other artist so perfectly felt and expressed the character of the town, whose Canaletto he has become." Degas's judgment on Wilde, after the 28-year-old Oscar had visited the painter's Paris studio, was: "He behaves as if he's playing Lord Byron in some suburban theatre." Goncourt called Wilde un puffiste (a braggart, a blagger), and thought even his homosexuality wasn't particular to himself, but imitative, if not plagiaristic: he had copied it from Verlaine, and also from Swinburne. The diarist Jules Renard wrote cuttingly, "He has at least the originality of being an Englishman" - the French never quite got hold of Wilde's Irish connection. But while they saw him as a false human being, they judged him a true poet.