Henri was born at his folks' meganormous country estate near Albi and was last in a line of French aristo'comtes who'd somehow managed to escape the guillotine, taxman, gout, incipient insanity and whatever other petit inconveniences the French over classes are subject to. When he was 12 he broke his leg, then at 14 he broke the other, and because of a genetic bone disorder he stopped growing, causing doting aunts to exclaim: ' My! Hasn't he errr... more or less stayed the same height he was last time I saw him.' i.e. one and a half metres. Anyway as they say, 'size doesn't comte, it's what you do with it', so the incredibly spunky pocket prodigy genius went off to Paris to study art.
He was soon having the time of his life doing brilliant paintings, lithographs and posters of the goings-on at Paris circuses, music halls and the assorted baguettes and beauties who inhabited them like La Goulue and Jane Avril, not to mention that notorious Parisian nymphomaniac Belle Époque.
Sometimes Henri would spend weeks or even months locked away in brothels observing the hanky panky, his little pencil going ten to the dozen as he sketched for all he was worth (it was a hard choice, but someone had to do it). As a result of suffering the occupational hazard of alcoholism, Henri was an aqua-phobic and H2O was said to put him in such l'eau spirits that he carried a goldfish with him which he dropped into carafe's to stop himself drinking the stuff. Consequently, by the time he was in his thirties he was more or less permanently pickled and had to stagger home where his mum looked after him until he died.
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