The Maupassants spent just over three years at Miromesnil after Guy’s birth, and when he was four, they moved out to less grand accommodation near Le Havre where, in 1856, his brother Hervé was born. The delights and freedoms associated with childhood spent at the seaside were tempered by less than idyllic scenes at home. The frequent fierce disagreements, quarrels and physical fights between their parents were a heavy and lasting influence upon the boys’ future views of love and marriage and upon Guy’s basic understanding of the relation between the two sexes.

When Guy was thirteen, Gustave and Laure de Maupassant drew up a private formal contract of separation, there being no legal divorce in France. Under its terms, Gustave was bound to support his family, which he did with a relatively generous allowance of 1,600 francs a year, at today’s equivalent some £6,000. It also stipulated that both parents should be responsible for the care and education of the children. In this matter, the father was less scrupulous. He quickly withdrew to Paris, seeing his sons on occasional visits only while Laure set up a home for them at Etretat and brought them up there alone.

Etretat was a small fishing village with a large beach surrounded by spectacular cliffs. Already a popular bathing spot, when Laure and the boys settled there it was becoming an increasingly fashionable resort, with a casino frequented by the many artists and celebrities now beginning to buy or rent summer cottages and elegant villas in its vicinity. The composer Offenbach was one such, and Monet, Courbet and Corot used the many local beauty spots as the subjects of their land- and seascapes.

For the next twelve years, apart from some brief spells visiting his father in Paris, and two terms at school in the capital, Guy and his brother were brought up by Laure with what has been described as a surfeit of maternal affection, pride and hope. Many years later, after his son had achieved widespread recognition, Maupassant père joked, ‘Guy owes to me his sexual potency. To his mother he owes what is worst in him, that is to say, all his other so-called development.’ The tensions between the two parents had clearly not diminished with the passage of time, but it is equally clear from Guy’s own accounts that these years were for him some of the happiest of his entire existence.