T.H. White's Troubled Heart: Women in The Once and Future King

running head

T.H. White’s Troubled Heart Women in The Once and Future King

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T.H. White, Eve [Nude and serpent], 1949, oil on canvas, T.H. White Collection 69.20.5. Permission from Estate of T.H. White and Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, The University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA.

T.H. White’s Troubled Heart Women in The Once and Future King

†Kurth Sprague

D.S. BREWER

© The estate of Kurth Sprague 2007 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Kurth Sprague to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988 First published 2007 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge An earlier version of this work was published as Arthuriana 16.3 (Fall 2006) ISBN 978-1-84384-163-0 D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mount Hope Ave, Rochester, NY 14604, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This publication is printed on acid-free paper Cover design and lettering by Sebastian Carter, Rampant Lions Press Disclaimer: Printed in Great Britain by Some images in the printed version this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. Antony RoweofLtd, Chippenham, Wiltshire To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

for Martha

Contents Acknowledgements

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Foreword: T. H. White Holdings at the Harry Ransom Center richard w. oram

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Preface

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Introduction

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Chapter One: T. H. White

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Chapter Two: Constance White

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Chapter Three: White’s Sources

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Chapter Four: Omitted and Minor Characters

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Chapter Five: Morgause

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Chapter Six: Guenever

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Conclusion

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Appendixes

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Notes

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Survey of Criticism on White

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Bibliography

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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

From the Journals of T.H. White Printed by kind permission of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Acknowledgments Selections from The White/Garnett Letters, ed. David Garnett (New York: The Viking Press, 1968), reprinted by permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. on behalf of The Executor of the Estate of David Garnett. Selections from Sylvia Townsend Warner, T.H. White: A Biography (London, Cape with Chatto & Windus, 1967; New York: The Viking Press, 1967), reprinted by permission of the Random House Group Ltd. Selections from published works and unpublished papers and art work of T.H. White, printed or reprinted by permission of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, and of the T.H. White Estate (David Higham Associates).

Thanks to Bonnie Wheeler—nonpareil editor and nevertheless friend. Thanks to Michael Widner, the most percipient of text and design editors. What there is of merit herein is owing to them; the flaws are mine. K.S.

Foreword T. H. White Holdings at the Harry Ransom Center

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urth Sprague’s study of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King is based in part on his research in the large White archive at the Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas at Austin). The recent arrival of additional correspondence provides an opportunity to acquaint scholars with the Center’s substantial (and underutilized) holdings of White materials and research opportunities therein. White’s archives were purchased by the Ransom Center between 1967 and 1969 and include manuscript materials for 108 novels, short stories, articles, poems, and other works. Titles represented include The Age of Scandal, The Book of Beasts, The Elephant and the Kangaroo, England Have My Bones, The Godstone and the Blackymor, The Goshawk, The Master, Mistress Masham’s Repose, the entire The Once and Future King, The Scandalmonger, The Witch in the Wood, and You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down. The manuscript of The Book of Merlyn was published by the University of Texas Press in 1977. These manuscripts are accompanied by six unpublished journals dating from 1938 to 1963 totaling 1,051 pages and nine notebooks totaling 1,200 pages. The number of letters from White is relatively small (others may be found at the University of Reading), and the bulk of it is the correspondence between White and his good friend David Garnett, which was published in 1968. Thus it was a pleasant surprise to receive a group of letters from White to his Stowe neighbors, the Wheeler family, generously donated in 2006 by Mrs. Josephine Wheeler Edrich. White wrote to several members of the family and was particularly close to Josephine (José or Josie) Wheeler, who was considerably younger than the author. His letters to her from the mid-1940s are revealing, shedding new light on his relationships with women in general. Correspondence accompanying the letters indicates that the letters were made available to White’s biographer Sylvia Townsend Warner, although she made no

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use of the materials. Although Warner’s portrait of White has served well for nearly forty years, few would disagree that there is a compelling need for more biographical research on this complex and often enigmatic personality. Along with the novelist’s manuscripts, the Ransom Center owns more than 400 volumes, quite a few of them heavily annotated, from White’s library. Unfortunately, many of these were damaged by water before they arrived in Austin. H.J. Jackson made considerable use of them in her study Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books (2001), but more work remains to be done on White’s reading and his responses to and use of his literary and historical sources, some of them dating back as far back as the sixteenth century. With increasing interest in the relationship between text and illustration, it is surprising that more attention has not been paid to White as an artist. Scholars interested in this topic will find, in addition to numerous marginal drawings in letters and books, twenty-four oil paintings, twelve charcoal and pen and ink sketches for Macbeth the Knife, and thirty-two other pencil, ink, charcoal, and pastel drawings. The Ransom Center sponsors a number of fellowships for the use of its collections; details are available at www.hrc.utexas.edu. richard w. oram Associate Director Harry Ransom Center The University of Texas at Austin

Preface

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t was as a doctoral dissertation that an early version of this book, published in revised form from arthuriana 16.3 (Fall 2006), first saw the light of day in 1978. When I wrote it I thought that if I had nothing of earth-shattering moment to say about T.H. White and his attitudes toward women—it seemed to me that his biographer had pretty thoroughly scouted out the terrain in that direction—I might at least bring additional proof to bear that would substantiate her views. I was excited by being permitted to use White’s journals and diaries as well as his note-laden books from his library in Alderney; to my delight one of these turned out to be the actual copy of Malory upon which White relied when he wrote The Once and Future King. While writing my dissertation, I naturally examined extant White criticism, making use of what seemed meet for my purposes. I have expanded this list here. (See ‘Survey of Criticism on White.’) I wanted to know not only how White’s idea of an omnibus Arthur evolved, but how he regarded the problems arising from the profound differences in tone from the springtime lyricism of the initial volume, The Sword in the Stone, to the melancholy, elegiac tragedy of the final Candle in the Wind. What clues did he find in Malory that prompted his ideas for such brilliant characterizations? What of TOAFK was White’s invention? If invention, what was its likely ultimate inspiration? At the same time I was curious about White’s depictions of women in his story, and what he did with those women already present in Malory’s pages. In other words, my main concern, I freely admit, was with what a twentieth-century novelist saw to use in a fifteenth-century source. With the passage of thirty years, a good deal has appeared in print on White and his writing. Yet, when reviewing what I wrote all those years ago, I have found little that I want to change. Scholars of the last generation have made important additions to White studies. Three whose work is essential to an appreciation of White: François Gallix, whose

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comprehensive and meticulously researched T.H. White: An Annotated Bibliography 1 is an immense scholarly contribution to any serious student of White’s life and writings. Elisabeth Brewer’s T.H. White’s The Once and Future King 2 is a thorough and detailed study of White’s artistic intention and the realization of that intention in his greatest work, written with respect and affection. ‘The Once and Future King: The Book That Grows Up,’3 by Alan Lupack, provides extremely valuable insights into the way White’s attitudes toward life and war evolved during the writing of the book. In a wholly laudable attempt to be objective, some critics, it seems to me, reveal themselves to be clearly out of sympathy with their subjects; no residual affection remains in evidence from the time they first settled on their subjects. Writing’s a penance, if not a pain. Such is emphatically not true of the work of Gallix, Brewer, and Lupack, whose work is percipient and even-handed. I confess I have yet to make a pilgrimage to Sheskin Lodge in the West of Ireland, nor Duke Mary’s in Yorkshire, or, for that matter, 3 Connaught Place in Alderney. Neither have I seen Stowe. When the opportunity presented itself to visit Cambridge in 1980 in connection with an Arthurian conference, I did, however, pay a visit to Queens’ College, whose buildings, with their brilliant magnificent hodge-podge of architectural styles dating from the college’s initial foundation in 1448, seemed instantly to put me in a mood to entertain without cavil the wildest of anachronisms. Crossing over the Mathematical Bridge— Queens’ sits on both sides of the River Cam, its older buildings on the Eastern side, the newer on the West—was like stepping from the fifteenth century into the twentieth. I do not know of a place where so many stages of English history jostle together so impressively yet off-handedly. On that same trip I had the pleasure of meeting the distinguished scholar Muriel Bradbrook, who graciously shared with me her recollections of the Cambridge of White’s time. On another trip to Cambridge a few years later, thanks to the thoughtfulness of Elisabeth and Derek Brewer, I had the chance to have tea with the ineffably lovely Elsie Duncan-Jones, who had been a close friend of ‘Tim’ White during their third year at Cambridge, and had once met his mother. ‘What was she like?’ I asked. ‘We really didn’t see a great deal of her, I’m afraid,’ came the apologetic reply. ‘She sent Tim and me all round Cambridge looking for Toby jugs. His mother was a great collector of Toby jugs.’

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In late December of 2001, I had the opportunity to interview Julie Andrews, the original Guenever of Camelot. Andrews and her husband, Tony Walton, visited White at his small house in Alderney in 1959, and they soon became fast friends. Over the next few years, Andrews and her husband saw a great deal of White—in Boston, in connection with the out-of-town rehearsals of Camelot, and especially in Alderney, where the Waltons bought a tiny house not far from White’s where they often came to spend vacation. Thus it was as a neighbor as much as a visitor or guest that Andrews grew to know him. She saw White in all moods and conditions. He drank, she said, all winter, and was sober during the summers when the young children were there. She speculated that White may possibly have suffered from some off-shoot of what would come to be known as ‘bi-polar disorder’—perhaps the cold bleak winters on Alderney, with darkness arriving so early in the afternoons, would aggravate his wellattested spells of depression. For at least twenty years it has been more or less common knowledge in England that ‘J.A.J.A.,’ the dedicatee of TOAFK, was a son of John Arlott, the famed cricket commentator for the BBC for thirty-four years. Young Arlott is said to have died the year after White—1965.4 His father John Arlott lived until 1991. To the best of my knowledge White’s muchanticipated sexual autobiography has yet to make a public appearance. His agents, David Higham Associates, Ltd., are resolute in their insistence that they do not know where the notebooks have ended up.5 The possibility exists that the notebooks were given to one of White’s close friends for safe-keeping. ***

This book is gratefully dedicated to Martha Rowan Hyder. She shares my affection for chivalry and vigorous life. Her fine spirit and endless curiosity brought new energy to this project and gave new meaning to my life. kurth sprague Sandy, Texas

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

From the Journals of T.H. White Printed by kind permission of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Introduction

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his study sets out to accomplish three main objectives. It attempts to show the difficulties under which T.H. White labored when he came to write about the women in The Once and Future King,1 and how these difficulties shaped his view of Lancelot, who was, for him, largely a figure of self-identification, and his depiction of Mordred, who became the incarnation of sexual transgression. Second, it tries to illustrate through a study of his writing process how White succeeded in overcoming his handicaps and created in Guenever a memorable female character. Third, in support of my arguments I’ve made available previously unpublished material written by White and by his mother, Constance White. According to White himself, it was his mother’s influence on him while he was a child that led him to regard women with deep distrust. In reading through his journals and diaries, one is rarely sensible of White entertaining a sexual response to a woman. Instead, women are frequently considered condescendingly almost as individuals of a separate species, worthy of his attention certainly, but inestimably less amiable than his favorite red setter, Brownie. It was well-nigh impossible for White to write of women fairly, or to treat sympathetically any woman from a background similar to his own who occupied a position of responsibility. When it came time to put women into the books he wrote, White labored under an immense disadvantage. The alternately lavish attention and the austere indifference which so bewilderingly replaced it that the beautiful, capricious, and selfish Constance White exhibited to her son, together with his experiences of corporal punishment while at Cheltenham, either commenced or confirmed his tendencies toward sadism and homosexuality and sank deep into his character feelings of shame, ugliness, and self-blame. It is helpful to remember that, in White’s time—particularly the years between the First and Second World Wars—the linkage between

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homosexuality and sadism was taken to be obvious and incontrovertible, possibly due in large measure to a growing general awareness of the prevalence, in English boys’ schools both prep and public, of what the French so delicately term le vice anglais. Today’s thinking, of course, among psychologists is that there is likely no connection between the two, and most certainly not an inevitable one. When he wrote TOAFK, White frequently omitted female characters contained in Malory or diminished their importance to the story, regularly downplaying Malory’s ‘bold bawdry.’ He condemned for their evanescent nature affairs of the heart. For man—stupid, fierce, impolitic—White saw no salvation unless he would consent to learn from the animal kingdom. In the place of motherhood, of which he had only a skewed knowledge, and fatherhood, of which he had no experience whatever, White substituted in TOAFK a wish fulfillment relationship exemplified by Merlyn and the Wart, a relationship in which later in his life he was to assume the elder role, of the senex figure, the repository of wisdom, kindliness and skills, and the puer aeternus, the young and innocent boy. Inevitably, the senex-puer aeternus relationship carries with it the unmistakable suggestion of homosexuality. If he recognized this tendency in himself—a diary for the edification of ‘other poor devils’ like himself was made the subject for a separate bequest—he was at pains to fight against giving in to it, by choosing for himself remote places in which to live and write, and by deliberately inviting physical danger and deprivation. As with his self-destructive drinking bouts, he was not always successful in his efforts to hew to the line that his strict morality insisted upon. The Once and Future King was in White’s eyes the story of old sin coming home to roost. For all the discussion in its pages of the blame for the tragedy originating with Uther’s lust for Arthur’s mother, and the contribution of the Lancelot-Guenever affair (another example of illicit love), there is no question that Arthur’s doom is precipitated through Morgause, who, by her seduction of the innocent Arthur, becomes the mother of Mordred. Morgause’s offense is sexual, and it is maternal. Although White realized that his mother’s well-attested presence in The Witch in the

introduction

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Wood 2 (later to be called The Queen of Air and Darkness 3) weakened his novel, and he struggled to exorcise her from its pages, he could not. Of the books he wrote, The Queen of Air and Darkness cost White the most in pain. Since White saw Lancelot in many ways as a projection of himself, the undeniable physical resemblance that Guenever bears to Morgause is a disturbing one. Guenever’s virtues and flaws appear to be a white magic version of Morgause’s virtues and flaws turned inside-out, and they make her a kind of alter ego of the wicked queen. It is as if White had beheld his mother with a lover’s eyes and not a son’s. Whatever motivations prompted his portrayal, White felt genuine affection for Guenever: she is the only full-blown woman in TOAFK ’s 600-odd pages, and she is a proper mistress for Lancelot. White’s view of Guenever demonstrates how a writer working under seemingly insurmountable disadvantages can succeed in writing a great and idealistic book balanced in its proportionate parts, with memorable characters acting out a nobly conceived plot. That White did not allow his handicaps to interfere with the balance of the story more than they did is grounds for admiration—and examination. There can have been but few more fortunate combinations of writer, time, subject, and place of composition than those that had their confluence in the ink which flowed from his sure pen when White wrote TOAFK: White, World War II, the Matter of Britain, and the remoteness of Ireland conspired to effect a unique creative chemistry. My field of vision, although it is, I hope, comprehensive of White’s life in terms of TOAFK, is limited in its scope of inquiry to discussion of that single work, and concerns itself in large measure with questions of narrative technique, character motivation, imagery, and use of sources. In appraising White’s feelings about TOAFK (and his feelings about other things as well), I have been aided by being allowed to avail myself of the White papers contained in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. This primary source material comes from notes White made for his 1963 lecture tour, his journal entries, and the notes he made in his books. In this study I have commonly used White’s own spelling for the names of the Malory characters. Where I am quoting from his

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unpublished writings I have made no effort to rein his exuberance or to correct his spelling. Thus ‘Malory’ will often (but not always) appear as ‘Mallory.’

Chapter One T.H. White But oh my God if I could once get from my heart What is in it about men and madness Ambition and the blood of boys— —T.H. White, ‘These are the Easy Verses.’

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he S.S. Exeter put out from New York in the last days of 1963, bound for Spain, Italy, Egypt, Lebanon, and Greece.1 It was a typical North Atlantic winter passage, with a heavy choppy beam sea making hard going. White, a passenger on the cargo vessel, kept a careful eye on his luggage stacked in the corners of his cabin. Rough as the voyage was, White managed to write to his friend Harry Griffiths. This was typical of White. He told Griffiths that he might see Vito when the Exeter put in at Naples; he didn’t know what the boy’s vacation schedule was. In any case, he would go on to Greece, where he would take pictures of the Hadrian buildings. Vito came aboard the Exeter at Naples. He was the son of a private taxi-cab driver whom White had befriended on an earlier trip to Naples, and had visited White on Alderney during the summer of 1963. On the morning of 17 January 1964, after finding White’s cabin door locked, Vito Moriconi borrowed a key from the purser, opened the cabin, and discovered White dead from a probable heart attack.2 White is buried in the Protestant cemetery in Athens. From the gravesite, one can see the Temple of Zeus and Hadrian’s Arch. The view of Hadrian’s Arch recommended itself to Harry Griffiths, who flew out to Athens to take charge of the funeral arrangements. White was fascinated by Hadrian.

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White’s simple gravestone is large, flat, and set flush with the earth. Cut in its plain surface is the outline of a reversed broadsword and the epitaph: t.h. white 1906 –– 1964 author who from a troubled heart delighted others loving and praising this life3

These words were written by Sylvia Townsend Warner, an author whom White admired greatly but had never met, who would be asked to write White’s biography. White considered Warner’s novel Mr. Fortune’s Maggot one of the best books written in the twentieth century and had included extended mention of it in one of his lectures, ‘Luck in Literature.’ It is somehow not surprising that White died after taking ship in the dead of winter after spending Christmas in New York. Although possessed of the nesting instinct, White commonly spent Christmas in the houses of friends—a wretched experience for an aging single man at the best of times—and his periodic drinking bouts posed problems for his hosts. The isolation of a ‘semi-cargo vessel’ (his words to Harry Griffiths) might have recommended itself to him after the excitement and exhaustion of his recently concluded lecture tour. The invitation to make a lecture tour of the United States came about as a result of the popularity of the omnibus TOAFK, published in 1958,4 and the well publicized and lavish production of the Lerner and Loewe musical based on it, Camelot. In December, 1960, White had attended the rehearsals of Camelot in Boston and the opening night in New York, and he had developed a deep affection for the stars of the production, Julie Andrews and Richard Burton. For the remainder of White’s life, Julie Andrews was to prove a tactful and genuine friend, tolerant and of generous heart. Carol Walton, White’s young secretary on the long trip, was Julie Andrews’s sister-in-law.

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Suspicious, arrogant, charmed by the sincerity he found in American hearts, charming, flattered by the attention, nervous, protective of the young girl, gloriously bearded, white hair disheveled, brilliant blue eyes characteristically bloodshot, unkempt and noble like Merlyn in a new suit, White came to the United States like an Old Testament prophet armed with ancient wisdom. Out of love for Carol Walton, White stayed dry until she left. It was a new world, awake and on its feet: rowdy, jostling, utterly spontaneous in its welcome to him, endearing itself to White with its vast prairies, mountains, deltas, and valleys. But what the widely acclaimed author of TOAFK and Mistress Masham’s Repose 5 now brought to this new world were, under the guise of different lecture topics, the same sad few concerns he had always had. Fame and money, as Warner comments, had not freed White from his devils. The words he brought to his audiences, which he heard flung back at him in ironic amplification, were words he had heard all his life. If there was nothing new, he was paying homage to the old. In one lecture entitled ‘The Pleasures of Learning,’ he boasted of his many skills. As Warner observes so justly, readers recalling Merlyn might be forgiven for thinking that so much learning betokened a great deal of sadness. So it was, too, with ‘Poets Unfashionable:’ Hopkins, dead at 45. Housman, who ‘was a very unhappy man who was never able to marry, and on the whole, thought that life was wretched.’6 In ‘Luck in Literature,’ White acknowledged those writers of great talent little known. Among them was Barbellion, whose real name was Bruce Cummings, [and who] died of paralysis at the age of 28, after one great diary, then as unknown as the poetry of Hopkins. Edgar Christian, also a diarist, starved to death without complaint at the age of 18. I read these wonderful and terrible books of Barbellion and Christian once a year, in Lent, for the good of my soul, and the honour of theirs.7

White tells of how, in 1906, when Barbellion was sixteen years old, he wrote that he wanted to be a great naturalist. In 1914, at the age of 24, this is what he wrote:

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t.h. white’s troubled heart It shall be told that I who am capable of passionate love, am sexually starved, and endure the pangs of a fiendish solitude in rooms, with an ugly landlady’s face when….I despair of ever finding a woman to love. I never meet women of my own class, and am unprepossessing in appearance and yet I fancy that once my reserve is melted I am not without attractions. ‘He grows on you,’ a girl said of me once. But I am hypercritical and hyperfastidious. I want too much….I search daily in the streets with a starved and hungry look. What a horrible and powerful and hateful thing this love instinct is! I hate it! I hate it, I hate it. It will not let me rest. I wish I were a eunuch….It is nothing less than scandalous that here I am aged 25 with no means of acquainting myself with contemporary men and women even of my own rank and station.8

‘Literature,’ White goes on to say, ‘hangs on such thin threads, and I have been lucky. Listen to Ecclesiastes.’ His voice is to be listened to, for Barbellion is an old acquaintance whose voice speaks for White’s own tortured mind. Twenty-one years before, on 25 August 1942, White— another lonely diarist like Barbellion and Christian—had written: It is a marvellous, terrible book. I will read it once a year...but only when I am well. It would kill me to read it when I was ill. Poor, decent, grand, most bravely struggling, doomed and lovely youth! If I could believe in souls I would throw open my own body to yours if I could, so that you could, in it, live out the burning life they robbed you of so cruelly….The picture of his poor stiff figure so still against the haystack that the flies and grasshoppers sit on him, and of his awful fury, crying out, ‘I am not dead yet! Get away!’ is the most terrible thing I know in literature. When I was 19 I was told by a doctor that I would be dead in 6 months.9 There are more elderly and middle-aged people in the world than there are young ones, and so we get the upper hand. Out of envy or something, we choose to scorn youth, and we call the love of youth ‘calf love’ and laugh at its ambitions. But the truth is that we never love so poignantly as in youth, never feel life so wonderfully, never are so wonderful. My own anguish, when at 19 I waited to be dead in six months, was something far beyond my present powers of feeling. And poor Barbellion’s tragedy, the tragedy of ambitious life-loving, excellent youth, butchered slowly in full torment when it could most feel the agony—not the physical agony, but the loss of what it loved and was losing—is, yes, it is the most terrible book I know. If only I could comfort him.10

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In a similar spirit of self-revelation, White chose the Emperor Hadrian as the topic of another of his lectures. Here again the parallels are close between what White seized upon to speak of, and his own heartfelt concerns: Hadrian was in his fifties during his association with Antinous—who, according to Perowne, may have been about eighteen when they met…. Hadrian was childless ‘because his unnatural wife,’ says Perowne, ‘boasted that she would never run the risk of giving him any; she had seen to that.’11

To anyone familiar with White’s family history, these observations about Hadrian’s relationship to his wife awaken echoes of the quarrels between Garrick White and Constance White. This is a similarity in whose ironic implications White must have reveled. White proceeds to describe Hadrian’s infatuation with Antinous in terms appallingly appropriate to himself: There is a genuine affliction of middle-aged people, which the psychiatrists call Pedophilia—the love of children and grandchildren. I have it myself.

Then, as if he had said too much, as indeed he had, White added, ‘It was perfectly normal for Hadrian to want an heir to his personal genius.’ White’s brief notes as an aide-memoire read here: ‘Aged 48, Hadrian met and adopted Antinous. Aged 54, Antinous drowns. Hadrian undergoes a gradual physical collapse, with hardening of the arteries. Hadrian’s appearance: Tall, very strong, well-made, athlete: fond of hunting and plain food.’ The similarity here is striking, too. White had fallen in love with one of the Alderney summer children six years previously, when he was fifty-one. The agony of his passion endured for the next four years. After the boy had rejected him, White went through a physical decline, the most serious evidence of which was the intermittent claudication in one of his legs. White himself was a tall man, strong, and fond of outdoor activities, including hunting and hawking. He customarily ate simple food and, in his latter years, was a vegetarian. It is hard not to see White’s lecture tour as a last crying-out to the world in which he could not live happily and from which he tried so hard to escape.

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White’s trip to the eminence of the lecture podium had not been made in a straight line or at an even pace. Rather, his arrival at this position had been achieved by cautious emergences and alarmed scuttlings-back. The emergences were sometimes dictated by luck or outside forces such as the war or high taxation, and over the years they outstripped the scuttling retreats. During both the advances and the fallings back, White fought with varying degrees of success to preserve a limited vulnerability. His proclivities were waiting, rested, strong; the fragile carapace of his selfprotection was scarce proof against wild sweet dreams of youth; young men; the rush of false solace that liquor granted him before plunging him even lower than before into the inferior hell of depression and physical pain; the absolute necessity to prove a love by hurt; to be hurt himself; or the contradictory desire compelling him to possess another soul and yet to abjure meddling. White had an extraordinary talent for visualization, and the recollections of his life, committed to his journals and sometimes appearing in his books, give the reader a sense of immediacy. To survey the early part of his life is to see a film run off in one’s mind’s eye. The retina is etched with thousands of images which jostle and crowd each other. The first frames flicker by, establishing place and mood, attested to by Constance White 12 and White himself, in his autobiographical fragment written in 1941.13 India, 1904: sunset, a hill country bungalow. A wedding picnic basket with ill-chosen provisions packed by a thirty-year-old spinster. Squeal of cotsprings, snores. Squeak of boards as Constance White seeks her pallet, outraged and heartsick. Summer, 1906: the baby born in Bombay. A pastiche of the next five years: scenes of violence and terror; shooting. Garrick White climbing into the mosquito-curtained bed with an oil lamp in one hand and loaded revolver in the other. Quarrels, accusations, drunkenness. A voice-over commentary, written when White was just thirty-two: Of hapless father hapless son My birth was brutally begun, And all my childhood o’er the pram

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The father and the maniac dam Struggled and leaned to pierce the knife Into each other’s bitter life. Thus bred without security Whom dared I love, whom did not flee?14

A multitude of images rush by, recalling White’s early childhood in India, his trip to England, his six years’ stay with the Astons at St. Leonard’s. There are other images, too, of knives and bandages, of his mother’s jealousy and cruelty. White gives the reader no clear instances of the suffocating tendernesses that must have followed the scenes of cruelty. Were there then his mother’s warm embraces, round arms, and a soft bosom to cry against? Did he ever recall a perfume from that time, uniquely hers, worn by the mother who said she was so repelled by the smell of violets that she used no scent? Did his mother hold and rock the child to allay the terror of blame and unworthiness she had already implanted in his mind? White must have loved the mother who came to comfort him; at the same time, he must have learned to fear the bewildering bestowal of affection that followed so closely on the heels of her outbursts of tongue-lashing and recrimination. I think it is well to remember that White’s reaction to his mother was just one of what could equally well have been several other reactions; White, after all, was an only child. T.E. Lawrence, with whom White can be said to have shared certain psychological attitudes—Lawrence’s relationship with his mother was colored by his discovery of the fact of his illegitimacy—was a man far different from his brothers, and Oscar Wilde’s children reacted to their father in differing ways. Winston Churchill, whose own childhood was no bed of roses, reacted toward his wilful, selfish, glamorous mother by asserting himself prodigiously. In fact, had he not had the childhood he did, is it not possible that Churchill would not have been Churchill? So may it have been with White. Although it seems to be well attested that White suffered greatly at his mother’s hands, is it not possible that he owed a great part of his talent and industry to her? His mother’s kind of gratuitous, capricious cruelty prevailed at Cheltenham, one of the oldest of the Victorian public schools, for offenses more imagined than real, or fabricated as an excuse for administration

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of a punishment clearly sexual in its implications. Imprinted in White’s mind from birth was the realization that he was unwanted, had caused pain, was innately depraved, and would never measure up to his mother’s standards. This desolate knowledge and the primitive desire to avoid physical pain strengthened White in his resolution to heat, hammer, temper, and bend to shape in his heart’s forge the determination and industry that were to become such an ingrained part of his nature. White excelled at Cheltenham. In a letter to his Cambridge tutor, L.J. Potts, White asked, ‘How is Mary? Has she had any of those children yet—of which she promised me one for immoral purposes?’15 It may be, as Warner suggests, that White felt himself under no restraint and could speak forthrightly to his old friend and also that he liked rather to affect the romantic pose. In 1927, White learned that he had tuberculosis. Cambridge friends took up a collection—the loyal Potts’s donation was munificent—and White was able to spend a year in Italy. It was here that he had his first experience of homosexual love. He began to write a novel about it, but abandoned it. There were problems: social problems, legal problems, problems in finding another homosexual with ‘an opposite specialization to his own.’16 As Warner observes: If the young man was sexually speculative, he was by inclination moral. He would scarcely have catalogued all the factors which make the homosexual’s life inevitably more tragic if he had not felt drawn to homosexuality; but he wanted it on its own terms: monogamous, secure and exclusive.17

In his journal of this time, White was first voicing his thoughts about escaping from life and sexual desire: The only counsel is chastity, which isn’t without its advantages. If one can’t escape from life one can at any rate escape from lust. Escape is a thing whose beauties continue to strike me with increasing vigour. I shall shortly escape from home.18

The possibility that supporting himself by his writing would enable him to escape the world and the sexual longings which tormented him was a tempting one for White. From time to time throughout his life, this was precisely what he tried to do. His courtship of physical danger and

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privation was merely another level of his desire to isolate himself from society. He realized, however, that he could not return to what he was: Change is not a growth. I cannot shave off accretions and become the Terence White who cried happily and wrote poetry looking out of his study window on the lawn and the brick wall at Chaltondale. I have forgotten most of him, and what remains is strange to me. Lord preserve me again from being smelted down by love.19

In 1929, White received his First Class With Distinction from Cambridge, published a volume of poems dedicated to his mother, and began writing a book called Three Lives about the messianic Joanna Southcott (whom he insisted upon treating as a serious figure), Admiral Byng, and Sir Jeffrey Hudson, an eighteen-inch-tall dwarf who had belonged to Henrietta Maria. Often drawn to the misunderstood, the frustrated, and the ridiculed, his choice of subject matter was characteristic of White. The following year found him teaching classics at a small preparatory school in the south of England. He continued to write, but now his view of himself included a complication: As T.H. White, he would write a book on Gerard Manley Hopkins; as James Aston, he would write novels for profit. These symmetrical aims were complicated by a social ambition. Destined to be an army officer, he had chosen to become a scholar, and now found himself what he probably called ‘an usher.’ This needed to be redressed. He would become a Toff.20

Two young boys from the school were expelled after having been found in bed together, and White was asked to accompany them on the train to London. On the way he asked them what they had been doing. They had been talking. ‘Asked what they had been talking about, they replied, “Buses and trains.”’21 Here the theme which so intrigued Constance White—the theme of innocence punished—appalled White himself, and it was with no apparent regret that, without immediate prospects, he left his teaching post, not alone because of the incident with the two boys, but because of the oppressive climate of which their experience had been a symptom.

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It is well to pause here and reflect that, for White, teaching was a deadly serious business. The zeal with which he pursued learning throughout his life has already been commented upon; a like zeal informed his attitude toward teaching. One never has the sense that White gave of less than his best in teaching. For him, teaching was not simply a job to be gotten through until his free time when he would be able to write. The recollections of his former students, which Warner has assembled, are eloquent testimony to the contrary. The didactic impulse ran strong in White, sometimes to the detriment of his books. When the lecturer took over the story teller’s job, as in The Book of Merlyn, the results could be stultifying, a fact that he must have recognized, since often he made (as with Merlyn) no sustained effort to secure publication of his purely didactic efforts. Moreover, the teaching posture—pedagogue and pupil—evidently answered some need in his nature sublimated from the purely sexual. The best description of this relationship is the senex-puer aeternus coupling, found in writers like Jung and his follower James Hillman.22 Briefly stated, the relationship is one of a wisdom-figure who exacts from the young boy a meed of adulation. The older man has not himself passed through the rites of passage of adolescence into maturity, and he wants to experience vicariously through the young boy what was denied to himself. The boy stands as a symbol of the older man’s deprivation, a biddable godhead whom the older man instructs. Obviously, this is a relationship that is easily, if not inevitably, turned from altruism to homosexuality, as critics of writers like Hemingway and Mark Twain have pointed out. The concept makes good sense in speaking of White, who, throughout his life, saw himself as a kind of Merlyn-figure. At the beginning of 1932, White left the small preparatory school. To a certain extent through his own efforts, and possibly through the help of the famous scholar E.M.W. Tillyard, who had helped him at Cambridge, White secured a plum of an appointment: he was asked to be Head of the English Department at Stowe. The four years White spent at Stowe constituted his first real emergence as a man, visible and vulnerable, and they culminated in a retreat.

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He came up the great drive at Stowe at the wheel of a black Bentley, probably second hand, but undeniably fast. He was pushing himself to fulfill his image of himself as a Toff. He was in the main liked and admired by his students, although he was recalled as a severe teacher of quelling ridicule, who prized above all else in the writing of his students ‘sincerity of heart.’ He continued to write industriously; during this four-year period he published Farewell Victoria,23 Earth Stopped,24 and Gone to Ground.25 Published before he reached Stowe, They Winter Abroad,26 First Lesson,27 and Darkness at Pemberley 28 conferred on White a kind of cachet by no whit diminished when a packet of publicity photos showing White in a beard was mistakenly opened by one of the boys. At Stowe, he began to keep his sporting diaries, one each for hunting, fishing, shooting, and flying; they would be published as England Have My Bones.29 This is an impressive performance, for young Mr. White was very much still a learner at these pastimes of the Toff, and yet his observations are keen and just and do not depend for their effect on a spurious sophistication. It took discipline to write down these experiences while they were yet fresh and when he must have been tired. It took talent to describe in such concrete and convincing detail the occurrences of each day. In England, White is forthright about his fears of people—and of pain, and he begins to shape his theory of deliberate fright: I have always been a coward: afraid of things that hurt, body or soul. At school I was horribly afraid of being beaten….I am afraid of people, of personal contacts. Some of my friends, who suffer from the same fear, have had the natural sense to give in to it and become happily shy. Unfortunately I didn’t do this. I had to go out to meet the personal contacts in armour: a shell like the protection of the hermit crab…. Perhaps it is true that the best method of defence is attack. Because I am afraid of things, of being hurt and death, I have to attempt them. This journal is about fear.30

If everything that happened at Stowe seems to indicate a rather brash young man making his way in life, devoted to his teaching, his writing, and his sportsman’s pursuits, there were other signs that pointed to a young man quite different. For one thing, in his flush of success, he had

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not forgotten either his mother or his childhood. Indeed, in England, White is at pains to recall them in no happy terms: I wonder whether all little boys believe themselves the worst in the world. In my case it was a fixed belief, with all its consequences. I think I must have had a mistaken mother. When she pleaded so movingly that I should grow up a big brave and honourable man, she was conditioning me to fear the reverse.31

For another thing, at Stowe, White began to see a psychoanalyst; this was a service he would require for the remainder of his life. White’s analyst apparently prescribed a heterosexual love affair and, in his letter to Potts, White describes his attempt to follow this prescription: It is most extraordinary. I am partially in love with a quite perfect barmaid, and spend six hours a day sitting in the pub, as temperately as is consistent with remaining in her good graces, staring at her. She doesn’t feel anything in particular about me. I talk to her a lot. She has the mental age and morality of a rather nice Girl Guide. Dark hair, big dark eyes, boyish figure, protruding or rather upstanding bottom, giggles. I find that I make a perfect lover. I am so humble. When she is cross I just go on holding my peace for days, admitting her superiority and ordering drinks in a steady imploring voice. It will be irresistible in the long run, poor girl, and we shall be very happy. Anything but marriage is out of the question for her. We shall take a public house outside Cambridge, and you shall come to dinner every night, bringing masses of dons. N.B. You pay. I am not really in love with her yet, or more emotionally than sexually, and I go on being psycho-analysed every day, dashing back to the pub the moment I have been done. Is this very selfish? No, I really do like her in a queer little way.32

This attempt to achieve a satisfactory sexual relationship with a woman was, like such other attempts White made at various times throughout his life, clearly doomed to failure. It is hard to see how it could have been otherwise, or feel that White did not, through his choices, take steps to ensure his failure. Most of the women he approached already operated under disabilities—of age, of background, of education—which, if they did not necessarily preclude them from serious consideration as a mate, certainly would act as inhibitions for the establishment of a mature relationship. White’s choices reflect a pathetically immature, insecure

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man. Had White been able to regard these women as individuals, human females, possessing a unique character and sexuality, the disabilities need not have mattered. But he did not. The women of whom he speaks are stereotypical cutouts he has created, exemplifying what he wishes to see: a separate, inferior species whose main value was that they could alleviate a misery. This is not to say that White did not involve himself with them; he did, passionately. The affair with the barmaid was a failure, but White was not discouraged. He continued to confide his faith in his psychoanalyst to Potts: He is a very great man—must be, for cured cases such as mine are I believe most rare, if not unique. I am so happy that I hop about like a wagtail in the streets. Personally, I think p.a. is the greatest thing in the world (how not, since it made me happy?) and if I had any guts I should write and publish my sexual autobiography, for the benefit of other poor devils. If only I had been this kind of person who went, ten years ago! My only outside evidence for ’s ability is that the man who gave me his address was a sadistic homosexual, and is now married and has a baby.33

At Stowe, besides taking up his sportsman’s pursuits, White first began to exhibit that vast curiosity about natural history that quickly became such a consuming passion with him. It is possible to view the sportsman’s pursuits almost as a way station on the road to natural history; except for fishing, the other sports usually demand, at some time during their performance, recourse to the society of others—as mechanics, as beaters, as huntsmen. The study of natural history need demand the company of no other person; it is the perfect solitary escape from life and the society of others into the thickets, countrysides, and forests of an English spring. Instead of a hunting horn, White heard the pipes of Pan, the god who gave his name to panic. Stowe was, after all, a boys’ school. His light-hearted tones to Potts notwithstanding, White may have realized sometime around the time of the barmaid—he must have been concerned enough about himself to initiate his visits to the analyst—the depth and extent of his sexual persuasion, and in some way come to the conclusion that, if he were to behave like a gentleman (the phrase was his, from a later time), it would be best to break his ties.

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At about the same time as his letter to Potts, Collins had offered White a retainer of £200 on condition that he give them a book a year. A modest independence was now possible. White spent the Easter holiday of 1936 fishing on the Orchy in Argyllshire, where, in the exhilaration of catching a thirty-pound salmon, he determined to resign his teaching post at Stowe. The gamekeeper’s cottage on the Stowe estate was a symbolic as well as physical distance from the school. Surrounded by woods, with its own fishpond, with neither running water nor electricity, it was the perfect retreat for a man grown wary of himself in the company of other men. A barn came with it ‘with notes of Victorian pheasants reared and killed... still legible on the door.’34 White rented the property for five shillings a week. The necessary chores were a daily penance joyfully undertaken. Work (to which White felt an absolute commitment) was wedded to the latest of his enthusiasms, falconry; he would train a goshawk and write about the experience. But this project failed when the bird broke his tether and flew away. As remote from the world in his cottage in the woods as Sir Ector in his castle in the midst of the Forest Sauvage, White, like Sir Ector, had established his own self-sufficient community. He reveled in his independence and was grateful for a little time of invulnerability from the affairs of men. For company, White had his red setter bitch, Brownie, who had come to him while he was still schoolmastering, a succession of hawks and merlins, which provided a series of heartbreaking disappointments to him, two badgers from a nearby sett, owls (one of whom he called Archimedes), several thousand books (White’s estimate), and the riotous tangents of his teeming, febrile mind. White furnished his cottage lavishly. Haunted by the specter of possessiveness (perhaps reawakened by his mother’s visit to him), he became almost complacent when he reflected that his hawks would be possessed by no man, not even himself. But his own heart went at hazard when Brownie almost died, and his grief is poignant in his description of her sickness. There is, while White is at Stowe Ridings, a real sense of happiness in his letters. The lord of his own little manor, he can pick and choose his times among men. His times among men were few now. Save for

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fishing with David Garnett and instructing some of the schoolboys who helped the training of the hawks by bringing mice, White remained in relative solitude. He was at his best in writing letters. Correspondence, as Warner observes, is a happy bridge which bears the weight of only one person at a time. No doubt the letters White wrote, like the journals he kept so assiduously, served to record the thoughts that other men might voice in idle conversation. But there is nothing idle about either White’s letters or his journals. Everything he wrote is polished and complete, even his book-notes. To a man aware that he is seized of faults, letter writing provides an opportunity to present to the world another finished image. The hasty, ill-considered word in conversation falls on the air irretrievable; a letter can express the best that is in a man of mind and style. In the late summer of 1938, after The Sword in the Stone 35 had been so well received both in England and America, White travelled to Heytesbury, where he met Siegfried Sassoon and the famed connoisseur Sir Sydney Cockerell, who had at one time been Curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. Cockerell warmed to White at once and, for the rest of his life, was extraordinarily kind to the younger man, taking an interest not only in White’s writing but in his personal welfare. It was on this trip that White lost his prized merlin. In the midst of success, sadness always stalked White. Later in the year, after a pleasant week-end with Cockerell, White penned the melancholy poem about his childhood. The storm clouds of war were gathering; the first faint whisper of war was blowing in White’s ears. It threatened White’s hard-won and precarious well-being. He began to build an air-raid shelter, with sorrow and perturbation of spirit....The human brain can be unmade so quickly, and it takes so long to make a book out of the brain, that I must at the same time begin to write in order that when the whiff of murder comes stealing something may be left behind.36

As the inheritor of the old Anglo-Indian Civil Service virtues of serving one’s country, reinforced by the regime of Cheltenham and a natural romanticism, White’s initial instinct was to join the armed forces. On the other hand, those virtues had long since been overlaid, if not supplanted, by a general liking for a liberal kind of socialism, which

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dictated that the only benefit of war was to manufacturers of arms and explosives. Besides, he grew up in a time inimical to the thought of war. He had only with difficulty won through to his modest independence and had a natural antipathy to any outside force that would threaten his fragile equilibrium. Further, White found the idea of war hateful, barbaric, and senseless. His wartime journals bear eloquent testimony to the anguish of White’s conscience.37 Very probably the war represented a threat to White’s psychological stability as well as his working habits: service in the war effort would throw White into the company of multitudes of jostling ‘normal’ men, a prospect he would find daunting and dispiriting. More important, it would mean giving up his beloved Brownie. In the event, he would write Cockerell, Sassoon, and Garnett and ask them to help him find a useful niche. But this request, like his courtship of the barmaid, seems doomed from the start; White apparently counted on a peacetime protocol, appears not to have made any systematic attempts to follow up his requests, and, while he was still in England, made no effort to report in person for an interview. His well-liked farming neighbors, the Osbornes, visited him in the fall of 1938 to fit White with a gas-mask. His outrage was apparent: Tommy Osborne came to me, with Mrs. Osborne, in order to fit me with a gas mask. It was a foul thing in which it was almost impossible to breathe, and when I blew out breath its rubber made a noise like a fart...and the obscene thing they brought with their true love was a token of slaughter, was a thing they ought not to have been allowed to touch with a pair of tongs. They came lovingly, and helped me with fumbling, farming fingers, to fit the badge of human degradation over my shrinking face. They talked about my garden, shy at the rape at which they were assisting (but what else could they do?) and all left the scene of beastliness degraded…. But Mrs. Osborne had tried to help by wearing her best hat.38

In December, White took himself off to the frozen wastes of the Wash to go goose-shooting. Cockerell sent him a copy of the Roxburghe bestiary, the first step on the way to White’s great work The Book of Beasts.39 He set about to read it in the mornings after he returned from dawn shooting. As always, he wrote. His life stripped down to the facts of physical hardship, hunger, and sleep, White luxuriated in a feeling of

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well-being. Shortly after the beginning of 1939, White visited Ireland to fish with Garnett. It was a visit that lasted six years. Witch—later Queen—went through its stages of revision during White’s Irish stay; The Ill-Made Knight,40 The Candle in the Wind,41 and The Book of Merlyn 42 were also written there, as well as The Elephant and the Kangaroo 43 and Repose. The details of these years and the circumstances that attended the writing of the TOAFK novels are described more fully in Chapter Five and my conclusion. Although he was not yet trapped in Ireland the way he would be after the outbreak of war, and although he professed not to have made his mind up about his part in it (and indeed tried for the next few years to find a place in the English war effort), it seems clear that, when White decided to remain in Ireland fishing on the Boyne in the spring of 1939 after Garnett had returned to England, it was much the same kind of symbolic turning-of-the-back as his resignation from Stowe to live in the gamekeeper’s cottage. White initially regarded Ireland with tremendous enthusiasm. His journals are filled with observation of Irish life and conversation. He studied Gaelic with a private tutor. He fished. He traveled. He took instruction in the Roman Catholic faith and was received as a hopeful Catholic. He embarked on serious inquiry about his supposedly Irish blood. He steeped himself in Irish history. He worked with his hawks. He also continued to agonize over the war, and he drank. In December of 1939 White spent three days alone on the remote island of Inniskea, off the Atlantic coast. He began to write a poem about the island and the ancient island god. When he returned to County Meath, he wrote more poetry, identifying himself with the nobility of nature (Corslieve and Nephin are mountains), and comparing it in characteristically pessimistic fashion to the failings of human nature: When dynasties are dead, as die they must, When sorrow is silent and red swords are rust, When man is a memory and his dreadful dreams are dust, I am Corslieve. Nephin and I keep trust: True to the untrue, to the unjust just.

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Eventually, White’s infatuation with the Gael turned to gall, and his enthusiasms evaporated to obsessions and simple paranoia: the barbarism of war, what would happen to Brownie if he had to return to England and leave her behind, his growing dislike of the Irish, his disaffection from Christianity generally and the Roman Catholic church in particular, his native inability to see women as women, and his views on Malory. On Saturday, 25 November 1944, returning from one of his twiceyearly trips to Dublin, where he had posted the typescript of Elephant to his publishers, White learned that, in his absence, Brownie had died. His grief was absolute. There are among White’s papers many pages devoted to Brownie; indeed, he had at one time written a long article about her. In an untitled dog story, he recalled: The reason why I came to love Brownie so passionately later, was that she was a woman. She was a Victorian woman. She did the right things, was dependent, was not brave or modern or manly, disliked swimming, was far from intellectual, did not wear the breeches, and was willing, indeed she was anxious to slip into my bosom and be lost in me.

A lock of hair still alive and glowing adorns the pages of photographs taken two years earlier. The notation accompanying it reads: ‘Died Saturday 25 November 1944 after about 12 years of perfect love.’ There is no reason to suppose that White meant less than what he said when he wrote that Brownie was a woman. Two years before her death, he had noted in his journal: What we write and paint and build, and the music we make, is better than ourselves. And one of the things we have made is our domestic animals. Brownie is something more lovely than humanity.

At the end of the war, White, almost destitute but with expectations of income from Repose, moved to a stone cottage high up in the Yorkshire mountains not far from Richmond. The cottage was called Duke Mary’s and was rented to him by his friend David Garnett, the owner. There was no heat, no running water, no electricity. Everything White used had to be carried up the mountain. Solitude suited White. He set kindling in the extra bedroom against the time when he might be ill. He established a rule by which to live his days. His letters to Cockerell and Garnett are, for the first time since his

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days at Stowe Ridings, happy ones, full of advice and good spirits. He tried to avoid the local pub, but was not always successful in doing so. And he had embarked upon another of his impossible love affairs, like the one with the barmaid when he was at Stowe, and, yet in the future, the one with the debutante visiting Alderney.44 Drafts of his Yorkshire letters exist and show how difficult it was for White to see women on their own terms. From one: My dear child and mistress and mother and daughter and all my sisters and cousins and aunts, won’t you be my family? And reform me and give me back my youth, and believe in me, and make me wash my neck.

White makes a note here to himself that he will promise not to ‘pester’ the girl again for a month. There is much crossing-out, and the letter is signed, ‘I love you so very painfully, Tim.’ White was now approaching his fortieth birthday; the object of his very painful affection was twenty. Later, White wrote the girl that he wanted to take her to Cambridge to meet Potts and to put her in school there to study music while he studied biology. Quite understandably, the girl shied away from involvement in a love affair of such daunting intellectualism and wrote her highminded suitor that she was going to marry someone else. For once, White’s elegant handwriting looks as if he were drunk when he framed his blistering reply. But his wretchedness betrayed White’s unworthy attempt to salvage his dignity by sarcastic repudiation, and his answer to the girl is pitiful. It reads in part, ‘It is for your scholarliness that I love you.’ Another part of his mind remained remote, austere, condemning. In a dream summary of the time, White wrote: That Killie, running headstrongly in front of me, had been run over in the street (Hills Rd.?) and killed. Explanation (which struck me while still half asleep): that my desires, if allowed to outrun my real relationship to…[the girl] would be or were destroyed. I may have been drunk in the dream. If so, a secondary explanation: that by drinking I am destroying my desire for [the girl]. Memorandum: stop drinking.

He did stop drinking—for a while. White spent the remaining sixteen years of his life in the Channel Islands, on Alderney, where he moved to escape the high taxation that

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threatened him with the success of Repose. He would have had to leave Killie behind had he settled on Sark; it might have occurred to him that it would have been a good idea to leave his troubles behind him when he moved to Alderney, but they accompanied him like his personal baggage. White was older now (at least he saw himself as older), and, as the years passed by, he appears to have been less ready to summon up that strength of will against his demons that he had so often demonstrated in the past. His periodic drinking bouts, like his outbursts of temper, continued in fine form and, on at least one occasion, led to a barroom brawl. His resolution to write gradually weakened: the spate of books with publication dates from these years came out of his stock-pot. The expensive enthusiasms which inflamed his fancy—cameras, a new car, the mahogany and brass motor launch that had belonged to Lady Docker, the gleaming appliances he bought for his house—furnished but a momentary brightness to the growing twilight of his life, even as the ultimate efflorescence of his fame and fortune with TOAFK and Camelot provided the green flash on his sunset horizon. Now obliged to live in society and with the means to entertain, White became expansive. The summer children were a delight, as were the visits of his friends. Put to thinking about the problems of the severely handicapped, White began to take a great interest in the deaf-blind, taught himself the deaf-and-dumb alphabet and, for several years, invited many of those so afflicted to spend weeks with him. He was an attentive host. By the spring of 1957, White was putting the finishing touches on TOAFK, which was to be published in omnibus form the next year. The project temporarily jolted White out of his lethargy, and he was full of resolution: If I took another dexedrine tablet tomorrow morning, it would stimulate me into setting about The Matter of Britain, but on the other hand I suspect that it would blunt or confuse my sensibilities. You have to be acutely poised and healthy—sort of Inner Cleanliness Comes First—to write well, and I have a deep distrust of artificial stimulants. You feel better, as from drink, but are you better? It is quite a good idea, even for absolute agnostics, to recite the better prayers in the C. of E. prayer book, before writing. The Matter of Britain will have to be my chef d’oeuvre,

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so I need to be at the top of training for it. The best psychiatrist in the world can’t beat the Book of Common Prayer.45

Later, although his sense of relief at being finished with TOAFK is apparent, there is a wistful tone to White’s journal entry: Today, the seventeenth of April 1957, I finished what I hope is my final revision of The Once and Future King, about twenty years after I started it, and I believe and hope it is a great book. It sounds presumptuous to say so, but on a great subject, which is the epic of Britain, you have to write downright badly to make a mess of it. It must be twenty years since I started off with Arthur, because I began writing the summer after I left Stowe, at the gamekeeper’s cottage in the Ridings, which must have been 1937. Or could it have been 1936? It was a very happy summer, and I was a happy man.46

White observed at the time that, having sent off TOAFK—minus Merlyn, which he probably realized was an ill-fitting cap to the tetralogy—he was ‘absolutely level with [himself]—an extraordinary experience like being a schoolboy again.’47 While White was in this euphoric mood of being even with himself, he was plunged into his last, most dangerous and desperate passion. In the fall of 1957 he fell in love with a young boy and, for the next four years, his days were spent in an agony of soul. In his journal entries, White’s wretchedness is palpable: I can’t write about the important part of this summer, because I have fallen in love with Zed....It would be unthinkable to make Zed unhappy with the weight of this impractical, unsuitable love. It would be against his human dignity. Besides, I love him for being happy and innocent, so it would be destroying what I loved. He could not stand the weight of the world against such feelings—not that they are bad in themselves. It is the public opinion which makes them so. In any case, on every score of his happiness, not my safety, the whole situation is an impossible one. All I can do is to behave like a gentleman. It has been my hideous fate to be born with an infinite capacity for love and joy with no hope of using them. I do not believe that some sort of sexual relations with Zed would do him harm—he would probably think and call them t’rific. I do not think I could hurt him spiritually or mentally. I do not believe that perverts are made so by seduction. I do not think that sex is evil, except when it is cruel or degrading, as in rape, sodomy, etc., or that I am evil or that he

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t.h. white’s troubled heart could be....They say they are coming again next summer, to stay in my house all the time this time, which seems terribly unwise. If I can still my heart between now and then, it may be safe.48

In his utter misery, White attempted to find consolation by reading the Book of Common Prayer: I tried in tears tonight to say the General Confession, but it stuck in my throat. My Father may be Almighty, but he is not most merciful. I may have erred and strayed like a lost sheep, and may have left undone those things which I ought to have done and done those things which I ought not to have done, but I have never known what they were. If there is no health in me, it is not for lack of trying. I am only too anxious to confess the fault if I can discover it. I cannot be restored to what I have never had, or be penitent for what I don’t know I have done. I try to be righteous, I am sober and am willing to be obedient—but I don’t know what to obey.49

Visits to his analyst proved unhelpful; visits to the boy deteriorated in rage and drinking. By March of 1959, White was confiding to his diary that: If I had no insight into my condition, really I would say I was insane. I am in a sort of whirlpool which goes round and round, thinking all day and half the night about a small boy—whom I don’t need sexually, whose personality I disapprove of intellectually, but to whom I am committed emotionally, against my will. The whole of my brain tells me the situation is impossible, while the whole of my heart nags on. It is like having a husband and wife inside myself, who can’t agree and quarrel all day. What do I want of Zed?—Not his body, merely the whole of him all the time. It’s equivalent to a confession of murder.50

In an effort to objectify his turmoil, White began to write the story of Mark and Tristram, but gave it up. Not so with his developing interest in Hadrian. White named a neo-classic temple in his garden after the Emperor whose tragedy came so close to his own. The dedication of the temple waited for the summer of 1959, when the boy, dressed in White’s scarlet bathrobe, took part in the commemoratory amateur dramatics. When Christmas came, White included the boy in the festivities surrounding the impending production of Camelot. By the following fall, White realized broken-heartedly that the boy had grown apart from him.

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In November 1960, White flew to Boston to see the out-of-town tryout of Camelot. Taking Merlyn’s prescription for being sad was all that there was left to White: he would learn about the theatre. By the spring of 1961, White was back in the slough of depression and, by his own admission, drinking a bottle of brandy a day. David Garnett flew to Alderney to see White in late June of 1962. Julie Andrews and her husband Tony Walton were already visiting White there, and the atmosphere at 3 Connaught Place was spirited and convivial. But when White stripped to the waist in the spring sunshine, Garnett was shocked at the man’s gross physical deterioration; White resembled Falstaff. During the course of the week-end, Garnett and White held a lengthy conversation about sexual morality. The subject had come up in this way. Garnett had sent White a copy of his novel Aspects of Love in 1955. White had read the book, disliked it, immediately written a letter to Garnett, but had waited several months before posting it to Garnett with another letter. In his first letter, White expressed his contempt for the temporality of modern love affairs and modern marriages. Typically, he contrasts these with the life-long fidelity of animals. Beneath the safe and customary distrust of the marriage state there runs the bone-deep pathological distrust of women: I believe human beings ought to be monogamous, like those glorious creatures, ravens, swans, eagles etc.—that if they consciously take a solemn vow in public they should stick to it—or not take it—and that women ought not to behave like headstrong babies….Surely women are dependable people as well as men? My adored grandfather on my mother’s side was a judge. He would have simply…answered your various dilemmas in two ways. He would have said. Number One (a Victorian One): It is unfair to ask one male to spend the money to educate the children of a different male.//Number Two: If a woman cannot behave herself according to the laws which I have given all my career to, as an Indian Civil Servant—the laws of honour—then take down her crenellated, lace, Victorian pants, and give her one resounding blow with the flat of the hand on the buttocks.51

Garnett’s reply to White was courteous, polished, quelling, and proceeded from a heart hurt by his friend’s chilly reception of his book and by his inability to appreciate the book’s main theme:

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t.h. white’s troubled heart Dear Tim, There is indeed a profound difference between us. Your letter reveals a mediaeval monkish attitude….Your remarks about taking down a woman’s drawers and beating her smack of flagellation—a perversion, which as you know, is frequent among those who were much caned as small boys, among schoolmasters and judges who have been able to inflict corporal punishment with impunity. But the corporal punishment of women though pleasant for its addicts will not make them live with men they dislike, or give up the lovers whom they do. That is over thanks to the married women’s property act….But I don’t intend to discuss the subject further. I have been twice married, have had six children and been the lover of an enormous number of other women, so that my views are founded on a great variety of experience which you have avoided. Your experience with one human and two canine bitches does not lead me to treat your views seriously. This is not written in ill-temper. Indeed I wish I could come to see you. I would like to convert you to drinking claret, a more important matter than dragging you out of the middle ages and the company of the Fathers of the Church. Love from BUNNY.52

When Garnett visited White on Alderney in 1962, the subject of this correspondence was still in White’s mind. In the course of their conversation, White explained to Garnett that he was a sadist: Tim explained that the sadist cannot be happy unless he has proved the love felt for him by acts of cruelty, which naturally are misinterpreted by normal human beings. It had been Tim’s fate to destroy every passionate love he had inspired. He had found himself always in the dilemma of either being sincere and cruel, or false and unnatural. Whichever line he followed, he revolted the object of his love and disgusted himself. He believed that he had inherited this perversion from a greatgrandfather who was a notorious flagellant. This seems to me most improbable and that his upbringing—as described in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s biography—being emotionally maltreated by his mother and ferociously flogged at school, fully accounts for it.53

The truth about White’s flagellant great grandfather may never be known, although it is possible that there is some mention of him in White’s private diaries. Judging from the number of books in White’s library that are concerned with flagellation, however, it appears that his interest in the subject was not an idle one.

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In the lengthy obituary that appeared in the London Times of Saturday, 18 January 1964, White was called ‘a writer of originality and distinction who had more in common with the nineteenth than with the middle of the twentieth century.’ Weekend readers of the Times were still probably thinking about the bizarre case reported on the front page. A retired colonel had hanged himself ‘in an elaborate ritual’ involving ballet tights, webbing straps, a gold chain, and a broad leather band with a lock. The coroner had asked the widow if her husband had had any abnormal habits. The woman replied that her husband had been reading about the Inquisition. The coroner’s report stated: ‘what a man does in his own bedroom is his own affair.’ With his natural bent for history, his susceptibility to the Early Church Fathers, and his omnivorous appetite for books, White might well have been amused by the significance attached to the date of his death. The seventeenth of January is the feast day of St. Antony, a man whom White would have readily understood, a hermit who passed most of his life alone, ‘spending his time in prayer, study, and the manual work necessary to earn his living. He underwent violent temptations, spiritual and physical.’54 If one went no further in the biography of St. Antony than this partial description, one could say that it might just as well have applied to White himself. In a diary entry made two years before (and quoted by Warner to provide an affecting ending to her book), White wrote, ‘I expect to make rather a good death. The essence of death is loneliness, and I have had plenty of practice at this.’55

From the Journals of T.H. White Printed by kind permission of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Chapter Two Constance White

C

onstance White was the most important figure in her son’s life. She caused his distrust of women and his inability to come to grips with the demands of heterosexual love. She either caused or enhanced his fascination with physical pain and cruelty and the attraction he came to feel for sadism. Less profoundly perhaps, but no less certainly, she provided, through her own intelligence and self-expression, an example that inspired much that was good in his own writing. It is revealing of Constance White’s powerful and multifaceted personality that she was able to maim her son’s sexual character at the same time as she influenced the commencement of his art; in neither case did she act consciously, nor did the conflict in her roles arouse any sense of self-contradiction in her contradictory nature. Very likely if she was aware later of her effect, she evaded responsibility for the maiming and took credit for the inspiration. But they are both hers. The purpose of this chapter, using material from Constance White’s unpublished journals, is to cast some light on both the inspiration and the nature and the extent of the maiming. Constance Aston White (?1875–1952) was the daughter of an Indian Judge. Of French and Scottish bloodlines, she was, according to her son, a beautiful woman who in her youth attracted many admirers. She seems to have travelled a good deal when she was growing up, mainly in the company of her mother, with whom she did not get on well. She had at least a smattering of languages, and played the piano expertly enough to be asked to give a concert. She had little knowledge or interest in what went on in the kitchen. Servants were plentiful in those days; most probably they were a perquisite of the judge’s position, like the privilege of keeping confiscated murder weapons. The Astons do not appear to have been people of any great means although they lived well and, upon their retirement, bought a house large enough to delight the four rampaging grandchildren whom they raised. One has the impression in reading her memoirs that Constance White’s early life was a circumscribed round of tennis-

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t.h. white’s troubled heart parties, teas, thés dansants, afternoon drives, and dinner parties—all in the company of safe civil servants and professional military families: she complains that she never found herself in the company of cultured people. As an outlet from the boredom and claustrophobia that informed such a regimented life (we sense the despair accompanying her numbing existence in which she was put down among natives who quickly lost their quaint charms in the eyes of the callow Englishwoman) Constance White became at her father’s hand a keen observer of how justice was dispensed. She read voraciously and without direction in several languages. From one of her suitors, a man called Stewart, she learned to develop her tastes and discrimination in literature and to regard her own emerging sexuality with mistrust. Judged by even the standards of those days, Stewart’s views on sex and marriage were remarkable. Constance White writes, ‘He believed in a curious method of birth control: a year to think, a year to pray, and a third year to purify oneself before union, so that the child should be given every chance possible before conception.’1

Already half-persuaded of the dangers of sex by her mother (who made her promise never to kiss a man) Constance may have accepted Stewart’s extreme views on purity, convinced that her own natural inclinations were wicked and immoral. When she was almost thirty, she was still a spinster. Her strong will and selfishness—the words are her son’s2—very likely daunted her prospective suitors. Stung by her mother’s cutting gibes, Constance White promised to marry the next man who asked her—and did. The episodes of violence and the terror the marriage inspired are recounted in White’s autobiographical fragment.3 The suitor thus accepted was Garrick White, a District Supervisor of Indian Police. As Constance White’s memoirs relate, the marriage was, from the first, a disaster.4 Naive Constance White was unprepared for the facts of physical mating; Garrick White was brutish and drunk. Eighteen months after the marriage, on 29 May 1906, her only son, Terence Hanbury White, was born in Bombay. At this period in White’s life, his mother began to demonstrate the selfishness and jealousy which were so much a part of her nature. Garrick White’s sister-in-law recalled that Constance White could not bear to see her son go to his father or to his ayah for affectionate treatment, or to watch him play with his little native friend, Chota. Attractive offers were made as counterproposals. Under one pretext or another the offenders were

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punished: the ayah was dismissed; White was chastised for disloyalty to his mother. Desperately ill with a stomach ailment, White, aged five, was taken by his mother and father to England, where the family stayed with the Astons, who had upon their retirement gone to live at St. Leonard’s, near Hastings, in Sussex. The quarrels, the drinking and the violence continued at the Astons’. After a year, Garrick White went back to India; six months later, Constance White followed him. White was left with his grandparents. In 1915, Constance White returned to England, but did not live with her family or take charge of her son, who continued to be cared for by the Astons until he began Cheltenham in 1920. Garrick White, perhaps prompted in his action by an official reprimand, retired from the Indian Police late in 1922. It is not clear whether he came back to England at this time or remained in India, but at the beginning of 1923, while his son was doing exemplary work at Cheltenham and smarting under the pain of its regime, Garrick White filed suit in London against his wife on a cause of action rarely brought to court: he sought the restitution of his conjugal rights. From the time of his son’s birth, Garrick White alleged, Constance White had refused to have intercourse. The case, which took two days to hear, was held in open court. The evidence presented by the defense—Constance White implies that what was presented was mild compared to what had actually taken place—was generally considered to be sensational and was widely reported in the press. The judge believed her testimony, dismissed Garrick White’s petition, assessed him costs, and required him to pay alimony. For a few short days Constance White was a celebrity. Though she professes shame at the memory, Constance White was clearly excited by her sudden and short-lived popularity and the seedy glamor of having to dash through the kitchens of restaurants seeking the back door in order to evade hordes of eager reporters. Her account of the jury and judge shaking hands with her after the trial has an unsettling similarity to her description of playing her first concert and her pride at the warm reception afforded her afterwards.5 Using her small savings, she then went in with a cousin on a modest pig and poultry operation in Sussex and ran it for some years on the ragged

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edge of penury and despair in a location evidently peopled by women, incompetents, and at least one bucolic psychopath. White was nearly eighteen by now, and Constance White was regarding with a sense of happy anticipation the day her son would finish school, find a job, and stop being a drain on her dwindling resources. But her son had been distinguishing himself at school, so the headmaster of Cheltenham informed her: she simply must do something to provide him with a university education. Constance White’s chagrin and resentment are apparent in the tones in which she recalls the moment she received the letter; largely absent from her account is any note of pride.6 Sacrificing all and relishing her role as martyr, Constance White sent her son to Cambridge. She lived out the remainder of her long life in Burwash, a small Sussex village whose main claim to fame seemed to be that its local hill had been commemorated in Puck of Pook’s Hill by Rudyard Kipling, who with his wife also lived there. In 1936, just after White resigned his teaching post at Stowe and was preparing to make his way as a writer, Garrick White fell behind in his alimony payments, and Constance White telegraphed her distraught son her intentions of suicide. The matter was cleared up, but White’s dutiful attitude toward his mother was characteristic of him. As Warner writes: White never broke with his mother, wrote to her, helped her with money, would at the pinch have tried to live with her; but her woes wrung a dry heart.7

The ‘steady, uncompromising dislike’8 which a friend saw in White’s attitude toward his mother is best illustrated in one of White’s comments about her written in 1939: My mother was (is) a woman for whom all love had to be dependent. She chased away from her her husband, her lover, and her only son. All these fled from her possessive selfishness, and she was left to extract her meed of affection from more slavish minds. She became a lover of dogs. This meant that the dogs had to love her. I have inherited this vice.9

A look at his autobiographical fragment shows more clearly the awareness White had for what she had done to him. What perhaps he was unaware of was that his mother had also prompted his initial interest in books and writing.

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Constance White died in a nursing home in December of 1952. Her son had travelled from Alderney to be at her bedside during the whole of her last week. As Warner describes: Time and absence had calmed his animosity. Since his father’s death he had been helping her with money. Some of us find it easier to forgive those who drink the champagne we send them; some do not. The former is a nobler class, and White belonged to it.10

In 1939, Constance White was writing her reminiscences, ‘All This Interested Me.’ The memoirs, now with the White papers, are contained in two large notebooks and total almost three hundred pages. They cover her experiences in India from shortly before her marriage up to the time of writing. She may have begun these recollections at her son’s request. At one point, she indicates that her son had asked her to write about love: ‘that incomprehensible happiness we all long for.’ But her journals cover a wide variety of subjects, if not of fundamental concerns, and love is by no means the only passion given prominence in their pages. It is clear in reading through her journals that T.H. White had, at some undetermined time, spent considerable care in going over them. He shortened sentences, improved punctuation and, in general, put them in such shape as would indicate that he intended them for publication. He does not change the writing, except to delete one or two phrases that were either repetitious or offensive to his sensibilities. In describing the severity of the beatings she had endured at Garrick White’s hands, Constance White writes that she had turned black and blue ‘from my breasts to my knees.’ White revised this specific detail to read ‘tortured with inflammation, black and blue.’ White comments in only two places. The first is to give the distance from Baroda to Berlin, in elucidation of Constance White’s text where she speaks of a trip between the two cities. The second comment, an expression of White’s admiration, occurs in the margin against a passage in which his mother writes that one must be prepared to atone for whatever suffering one causes in life. ‘Tremendous!’ writes White. It is an indication of White’s professional detachment as an editor that the irony of his applauding such a sentiment appears to have escaped him. The statement itself is at such odds with what the spirit must have been behind her mistreatment of him that one searches for sarcasm in that

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single word ‘Tremendous.’ But there is no reason to construe his comment as expressive of any emotion other than an honest admiration. Perhaps White realized that it was a part of his mother’s contradictory nature that, when she wrote this sentence, she was being completely candid with herself at that moment, utterly sincere in what she said. The sentence being a particularly fine one, and the sentiment it contained being a noble expression, it would be pettiness for him to take issue on the basis of what he knew from his personal experience of her selfishness and suffocation. In other places, too, where White has refrained from comment, one finds oneself admiring the man who, although his mother aroused in him such deep antipathy, was able throughout her life to act towards her in exemplary fashion. One remarkable thing about her memoirs is that Constance White never refers either to her husband or her son by name: Garrick White is invariably ‘my husband,’ while White is referred to as ‘my son’ or ‘the kid.’ The only two people in her story besides various natives and subsidiary characters on whom she confers the courtesy of calling by name are her erstwhile suitor, Stewart, and Kester, the psychopathic countryman who broke her arm. Her journals contain few references to her son, and she never once mentions that she left him in England with her parents for some six years. Besides the fact that when he was a child in India he cried for the reflection of the moon and determined that the sea tasted of salt and not of pepper (observations seized upon by Warner 11), one is kept largely ignorant of White’s development. The few remarks Constance White does make about her son can scarcely have comforted him. In one place, she writes that, although she has tried never to meddle in his life, she has directed his taste in books.12 She is proud of him now, she says, ‘because he not only reads now. He writes well—sometimes.’ Perhaps the Cambridge First with Honours and Book-of-the-Month Club author only smiled when he read this; but it is hard to see how he could have smiled when his mother, ending a passage in which she complains of the miseries of her life, adds to the long list ‘a son abroad who does not love me.’ As has already been mentioned, the subject matter of Constance White’s journals covers a wide variety of topics. However, the psychological

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concerns—we might almost say obsessions—that underlie these topics are, to a reader familiar with her son’s work, few and familiar. She states no more than the truth when she writes that ‘these pages seem records of murder and sudden death.’ More than being records of murder and sudden death, which were not really concerns of White, they abound in instances of physical pain and cruelty, which were, indeed, familiar landmarks in her son’s interior landscape. A sampling of the subjects in Constance White’s journal demonstrates her fascination with death, innocence punished, sadism, and other concerns prevalent in White’s own writing. Violence holds attractions for her. She writes about suicides, both her own (‘I meant to throw [my life] away when my son was 18 and able to look after himself’) and those of others (‘at last I made out that a stranger had hanged himself in a tree close by’). Sometimes she envisions the suicides of her rejected lovers. She writes about plagues (‘The Great Plague spread everywhere we lived in a terrible smell of disinfectant’), earthquakes, and tales of what happened to people who were taking baths during earthquakes. She writes about madness, of horses (‘At Indore, one of our horses went mad, a form of dumb rabies…fortunately it fell and broke a leg’), of dogs, and of people (a passenger on a ship on which she was travelling went mad ‘just past Suez.’) In Kashmir she is warned that she has the power ‘to meddle with devils.’ She finds that she has the ability to reduce fever by faith-healing. She speaks of ESP, of parapsychology, of reincarnation. She is curious about how long consciousness lingers after death, and expresses an interest in Theosophism and Mme. Blavatsky. She has seen one ghost: ‘of my Aberdeen [dog] Peter, whom I had to leave behind me in India. I was brushing my hair one morning in London when the bedroom wall dissolved before my eyes.’ She has the gift of second sight, one moment seeing the pink face of a tiny baby in a pram and the next, in place of the baby’s face, the wrinkled visage of an old man. There is a good deal of talk in her journals about animals. Although she admits that she is not ‘clever with animals’—at least not as clever as Garrick White, who kept flying squirrels and two small panther cubs loose in their house—she adores dogs. Constance White dreams of taking a train to the stars. The train has three stops: one, where there are babies,

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one where there are men, and one where there are dogs. She chooses to ride till the end of the line. She goes tiger-shooting with her husband and observes that an ‘elephant in must exhibits the most relentless cruelty.’ She records her feelings about how certain animals react to fear and deplores the conduct of a popular young civilian who threw parties to watch his terriers tear apart a cat thrown in to their midst. She recalls a native, Tliat, who incited other ‘Natives to High Treason against the Crown…urging Indians to murder Europeans.’ She often accompanied Garrick White on his visits to the scenes of crimes and followed him when he set out to track down outlaws. She also practiced revolver shooting with him at the butts. She was apparently fearless: ‘I only once was completely cowed when shooting.’ Besides liking to watch boxing matches (‘I saw Billy Wells beaten by Carpentier and again Billy Wells beaten by Joe Bickett’), she is expert enough about the sport to remark ‘if I ran boxing matches, I should bar clinching altogether.’ A cool observation and economy of style underly her reporting of a shooting: ‘the murderer emptied his revolver into the body at point-blank range.’ A fascination for the morbid is apparent. ‘Dead bodies cannot be kept long in India’ and ‘a second slash sliced his head right off’ are but two examples out of many contained in her journals, where she records the amusing customs of the natives by observing that meat keeps in castor oil and that uncooked fish left to spoil in the sun is considered a delicacy. (We are reminded of her son’s enthusiasm for collecting ancient stories.) But it is her curious preoccupation with cruelty and physical pain— especially when combined in some way with the visitation of these upon the innocent or undeserving—that is the most impressive recollection that the reader takes away from ‘All This Interested Me.’ She speaks of a widower of her acquaintance, utterly selfish, who loved cruelty. He had a son and daughter of sixteen, twins. He used to bring them on Sundays to eat mulberries in our garden. The first day he came he said to me, ‘I’ll show you how to bring up children: I strip them and thrash them. Come here.’ They came. ‘Hold out your hands,’ he said. They did. Smiling, he struck them again and again cruelly with his cane Those two adored him. A year or two later he became paralysed. They have devoted their lives to him. He made them into fine characters, loyal, brave, splendid young people.

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Was he bad? Isn’t it puzzling?

Her story of the Kester affair is detailed and compelling. Kester was a psychopathic laborer of evil reputation, who had once put a man in the hospital for over a year by jumping up and down on his unprotected abdomen with hobnailed boots and had been taken in charge after being seen dismembering a goat—alive. It is hard, in reading Constance White’s account, not to come to the conclusion that she may have exuded some subtle kind of attraction for such men. One suspects, no doubt uncharitably, that there would always loiter in the neighborhood of Constance White men like Garrick White, full of drink and brutal desire, or Kester, inflamed with inchoate dreams of violence and bloodshed. Perhaps it was her destiny to attract such men. Kester, at any rate, momentarily sated her preoccupation with pain, and she was seen publicly as a figure of violated innocence, with the marks of her martyrdom still apparent on her: I was mixed up in a row with a country-man once in England—he knocked me down a great many times with his fist [she notices in another place that his fists were dirty] and broke my arm too. After going down 3 or 4 times, I might have been made of rags as far as feeling anything was concerned, when his fist connected with my face. Is this common?

Constance White’s interest in pain seemed to extend to a curiosity about the effects of electric shock. In one case, a police officer in India developed a method of making the natives who were brought before him for questioning tell the truth. In the doorway where they stood, he installed an electrified matting and, when he thought they were lying, he would send a charge through it into their bare feet. Constance White’s observation is edifying: ‘It was such a pity later when the Powers that Be heard of it, they wouldn’t permit it. They said it was torture, which of course it wasn’t.’ Another time, she dreams of using electric shock on plants: ‘I want to experiment with them. I want to send little electric shocks repeatedly on to rootlets to try and see whether after many of them the rootlets will try to get out of the way.’ Then she adds, ‘Do you see where that may lead to?’

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From her early days in India, she recalls the sight and sound of a woman hanging by her heels from a tree and tom-toms trying ineffectually to drown her screams. She remembers prisoners working in the hot sun. She wastes little pity on these: she has many times watched a prisoner sitting in the shade while the sepoy policeman guarding him has been forced to march and countermarch under arms. Sometimes justice would miscarry. She recounts the story of her husband’s sentencing a native to a flogging for some alleged misdeed. The sentence was carried out, and it was only when the prisoner’s native pleader arrived that Garrick White recalled that he hadn’t allowed the man a chance to present a defense. Constance White was amused by this: ‘How do you unflog a native?’ she wonders. Another time, a native witness, suborned, under oath testified that he had been made to give false testimony by Constance White, who had ordered him buried in the hot sand up to his chin and then held a loaded revolver to his head. Firing off several rounds close to his ear, she then made him repeat the story she wanted. Constance White laughs the story off as completely fabricated, and yet one can sense a kind of sensuous exhilaration that the scene holds for her. As a further illustration of her interest in innocence punished, Constance White tells the story of a native police detachment under pressure from their headquarters to arrest a gang of criminals. Their half-hearted efforts to arrest the malefactors were bootless. Finally, they hit upon a clever scheme. They went up-country and took into custody a group of illiterate and impoverished tribesmen. They made them confess to the crimes by promising that, if they told this story to the British, the tribesmen would be given a clean room to sleep in, food, new clothing, and many sahibs would come to hear this great thing that they had done. As long as they would tell this story, they would be fed and clothed. The luckless natives never realized that they had been duped until the ropes were around their necks. They were hanged, vainly protesting their innocence. A variation of her preoccupation with the physical punishment of the innocent is also shown in her thoughts about child raising. Underneath the conventional deploring of what she describes, there seems to run the

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same kind of perverse attraction for what she is describing (and deploring) that there is in many other scenes of pain that she recounts: I’ve often thought how interesting it would be to experiment with child training on a large scale. Words are so powerful. It is hard to realize that a great influence they have over people’s minds. For instance, if you say in the hearing of a child, ‘He (or she) is shy,’ that child although it has never been shy in all its life, will very likely become shy…Greed, Fear, Cruelty, all manner of evil may be implanted in immature minds simply by words.

Her words here provide a diabolical antiphony to the words of Ray Garnett: ‘It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.’13 One can see why White was so immensely susceptible to the phrase and used it for The Ill-Made Knight in his depiction of Lancelot’s character, ‘full of unspecified blame.’ He very likely had firsthand knowledge of its truth. From experimenting with plants—and children—her mind goes naturally to education. Here she speaks of the English Public Schools and, obviously aware of the fact that she is a woman alone raising a male child, describes with approbation the severe regime that such schools impose on the lower forms. After telling of how patriotic the apprentices on ships are likely to be in spite of miserable food and poor working conditions and comparing their spirit to that of common hedge-laborers, she writes: I wonder is it because this generation has been reared by women? Are we the dry-rot sapping the honor and strength of Englishmen? Have you seen how the Junior Public Schools treat Mother’s Little Darling when he first goes down to the Playing Fields? Stripped to a singlet and a pair of shorts in midwinter, that little pet has to run to keep warm. I believe cossetting weakens the moral fibre of a nation as it ruins the health of an individual. We are teaching our men to take everything, not to give.

Besides recounting the story of the young civilian who delighted his friends by throwing live cats to his terriers at Sunday morning parties, Constance White details the pain of childbirth, the description of which written by any mother is enough to arouse tremendous feelings of guilt when read by any male child.

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She relates several stories of suicide due to unrequited love. Some of these tales have a sort of fin de siècle charm to them and possess a curious formality of plot. The woman in the story is beautiful and disillusioned by her marriage to an older man. She is pursued by a younger man, possibly a bit of a bounder, pressed by debts, but undeniably attractive to her. The woman, sacrificing all for the sanctity of marriage, tells the young man against her own interests to find a young wife, but the youth remains importunate. The woman visits a friend’s house for tea, but is distracted and glances often at her watch. The friend expresses a polite curiosity. The woman rises and tells her friend that the youth is waiting for her to appear at his house at a certain hour; they are to run away together. He has made some desperate statements to her and, now that the hour is past, she can no longer ignore her pangs of conscience. The friend summons her carriage, and the woman, now frantic, commands the coachman to strike a gallop for the young man’s house. But it is too late when they arrive at the gates. The young man has shot himself fatally. The woman is overcome with remorse. It is hard, if not impossible, to read these stories of nobility and sacrifice without feeling that Constance White saw herself in the role of the femme fatale. Certainly there is a surface slickness to them, and it is noteworthy that at no time is the woman ever permitted to enjoy the pleasurable aspects of lovemaking. For the most part, the stories are all kept on a very high moral plane. Their relevance to her son’s infatuation with Malory is not at first glance apparent, but it exists. Raised in an atmosphere where stories of this kind must have been recounted approvingly, being made by his own admission to fall in love with his mother, White was peculiarly susceptible to a common ancestor of them, Malory’s archetypal tale of Arthur–Lancelot–Guenever. An identification of himself with Lancelot was simply carrying through an inherited trait; after all, his mother plainly identified herself with her melancholy heroines. If he then identified his tragedy-queen mother—at least her best qualities— with Guenever, he, like Agravaine with Morgause, could work out a simulacrum of his forbidden desire. For whatever reasons, her son asked Constance White ‘to write about love,’ and it is in her attitudes toward love that her journals are most revealing. The concerns that underlie her other subjects—pain, cruelty,

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morbidity—underlie this topic, too. For the reason that it is as important to recognize Constance White’s skill as a writer as it is to apprehend the possible origins of the nature and quality of her sexual attitudes, I have included an appendix composed of excerpts from ‘All This Interested Me:’ her courtship by the remarkable Stewart, whose ideas on birth control must have been notable even in that time of highmindedness; and her recollections of her marriage night, her marriage and her separation from Garrick White. White must have often heard about these experiences when he was small, and his mother’s talent in relating them must have been impressive to her son. It is clear that Constance White and her mother did not get along well together. On a trip to Burma, Mrs. White advised her daughter that she should never let a man kiss her. Since that time, Constance White admitted that she had a deep dislike of kissing: ‘My lips are my own…I don’t even like to see babies kissed on the lips—it seems to me a kind of violation.’ She shows her resentment toward her mother when she barely conceals her delight that, when Stewart is on his knees kissing her hem and murmuring shockingly incongruous Biblical quotations, her mother is behind the door of her room all unwitting. One wonders whether her marriage to Garrick White, precipitated by her rash promise to marry the next man who asked her, was not for all its sadness a form of selfdestructive behavior: her husband’s brutality and drunkenness provided a perfect defense had her mother upbraided her for her intransigence in refusing to honor the marriage commitment. Constance White knew herself to be unworthy and she reveled in scenes of her utter degradation: at Kester’s hands, when he lashed her with his walking stick about her face and arms; and at Garrick White’s hands, when he beat her black and blue from her breasts to her knees. After experiences of this kind, she could easily indulge herself and play the tragedy-queen. Remote from the rest of humanity, she would never surrender herself to any man. Her rage for possessiveness need never abate. Whatever Constance White’s faults were, she had a bright, inquisitive mind, one which found pleasure in free association. If, by transmitting her fears and faults to her son, she maimed his sexual character, she also made him a legacy of her curiosity about places and people, about the

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conflicts of the human heart, and a priceless ability to see a whole in its unassembled parts. His enthusiasms, his fascination with history, and his obsession with character, as well as his talent at envisioning the structure of a book, White owed to his mother. If she saw herself as the tragedyqueen of a thousand different roles, she gave her son the gift of depicting an awesome variety of characters discrete and round. If Constance White’s own unhappy mind was driven to contemplation of melancholy subjects—and this, too, was a legacy—it was also driven upon occasion to the portrayal of beauty: Once walking along the front at night I saw the line of surf breaking on the beach—a long lonely line shimmering silver in the moonlight. Again in the Mediterranean, looking over the side of the ship, I loved the water, the deep underneath water, in the colour of sapphires, a glorious satisfying blue, and as the great waves surge up, forever changing, never still, near the surface streaks and swirls of clear pale green water and white foam glimmer in the blue.

In fairness to Constance White, it must be remembered that such eloquence and stylistic grace were a legacy, too.

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Chapter Three White’s Sources

T

he genesis and growth of any literary work is a fascinating process to behold; with White and the writing of TOAFK, the fascination is increased a hundred-fold because, from the initial stage of planning to the point of execution, so much of the book’s generation is clearly documented by virtue of White’s letters, his journal entries, and the character of his books, in many of which he made detailed notations. This chapter deals with White’s writing plan, his use of Malory, the historical setting he chose for TOAFK, his technique of using deliberate anachronisms, his recourse to scholarship, his well-deserved reputation as an antiquary, his use of the Celtic tradition, and his attitude toward the Victorians. white’s plan White drafted a statement of intent, necessarily detailed and lengthy, in answer to Sir Sydney Cockerell, who had sent White some material from Morgan MS 705–806, and who had suggested a time-setting for his book of the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries: Nothing that you could have said would have persuaded me, but the picture did the trick. I am half sorry that I decided on the 15th century, but it is too late to change, and anyway I am only half sorry. The consolation is that it is an imaginary 15th century. I am putting myself as far as possible in Malory’s mind (which was a dreamer’s) and bundling everything together in the way I think he bundled it. The subject is too long to explain except by word of mouth, but I am trying to write of an imaginary world which was imagined in the 15th century....So I am taking 15th cent. as a provisional forward limit (except where magic or serious humour is concerned—for instance, it is a serious comment on chivalry to make knights-errant drop their ‘g’s’ like huntin’ men) and often darting back to the positively Gaelic past (the kind of date you think of) when I feel that Malory did the same....Malory and I are both

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t.h. white’s troubled heart dreaming. We care very little for exact dates, and he says I am to tell you I am after the spirit of the Morte d’Arthur (just as he was after the spirit of those sources he collated) seen through the eyes of 1939. He looked through 1489 (was it?—can’t trouble to verify) and got a lot of 1489 muddled up with the sources. I am looking through 1939 at 1489 itself looking backwards.1

Warner writes: Here there is a drawing of White with a telescope looking along a dotted line of sight at Malory with a telescope who looks along the line of sight at an armed figure in a posture of defence, labelled ‘Sources,’ who is looking in the same direction as do White and Malory. Swept on by the pleasure of a little Art, White takes a fresh page, writes, ‘Perhaps one could draw a diagram like this;’ and draws a much improved White, dressed for shooting, at the top left-hand corner of a triangle, looking down through his telescope at a much more expressive Malory in a gown, at the base of the triangle. Malory is looking up to the word Sources at the triangle’s top right-hand corner. White looks both downwards at Malory and along the top of the triangle towards Sources. Two lines of sight are projected from Malory’s telescope: one, his Malorian view of Sources, the other, White’s view of Sources via Malory. Thus White has a direct view of Sources, a direct view of Malory, and a further view of Sources as seen by Malory.2

His reply to Cockerell was clearly carefully thought out, and in the event White stuck by his plan tenaciously. white’s use of malory Probably because of the influence of C.F. Scott, a master of White’s at Cheltenham, White began to show an interest in medieval romance as early as 1920, when he wrote an unfinished narrative poem entitled ‘The Death of Oliver.’3 Seven years later at Cambridge, White submitted an essay on Malory for his English Tripos. T.R. Henn, a fellow of St. Catharine’s, recalled it as being ‘wild, violent, very funny; clearly the germ of The Sword in the Stone.’4 But White later dismissed it with a ‘naturally I did not read Malory when writing about him’ and implied that it was merely about sources. By then, he bore it a grudge. One of the Tripos examiners was a Malory expert, and so the rumor went—had not been amused.5

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One summer evening in 1936 after White had resigned his teaching post at Stowe and was occupying the gamekeeper’s cottage at Stowe Ridings, he found himself bored, and—so he said—in lack of anything better to read, reached down from his shelf a copy of Malory.6 There are four copies of Malory listed among the books taken from White’s home in Alderney after his death in 1964. One is Arthur Pendragon.7 The second is the Everyman Edition of Caxton published by Dent in 1935. The third is the first edition of Vinaver’s Works.8 The fourth copy is Sir Edward Strachey’s edition of 1899.9 Arthur Pendragon is innocent of notes; so, too, is the Vinaver edition which, in the language of the catalogue, is ‘in very good condition’ with its dust covers intact and pages uncut. The Dent Everyman edition has notes scattered throughout it, but it is the Strachey edition that is most profusely annotated, and it is this copy that I suppose White to have relied on most in writing TOAFK, particularly when he wrote Knight. White saw Malory’s Arthurian material as a single, unified, comprehensive tragedy made up of three interconnected strands:10 the ancient Cornwall grievance which began with Uther’s seduction of Igraine, Arthur’s incestuous union with Morgause, and the LancelotGuenever affair. His journal entries dealing with the character and motivations of Lancelot, Guenever, Morgause, and Elaine, in addition to his letters to David Garnett and Sir Sydney Cockerell, attest to his immense loyalty to Malory, whom White terms ‘one of our greatest national poets’ in his unpublished essay on Malory,11 and the greatest English poet next to Shakespeare in a letter to Cockerell. Book I. White uses little of the material in Book I for Sword, which begins when the Wart is a young boy at Sir Ector’s castle and ends immediately after his coronation. No mention is made of the circumstances surrounding Arthur’s birth or of Sir Ector’s wife, who in Malory nursed Arthur when he was a baby 12 and whom he remembers with affection when he is about to be crowned.13 Nor is mention made of the hostess at the inn.14 Of the few details supplied by Malory about Arthur’s childhood, it is noteworthy that White chose to ignore the three women.15 From Book I, Chapter 20,16 White took King Pellinore and his pursuit of the Questing Beast for inclusion in Sword.

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By means of a highly-colored conversation among the Orkney children, the reader is at last given in Queen the facts contained in Malory’s Book I concerning the circumstances surrounding Arthur’s birth. The Orkney children’s childhood, like the Wart’s in Sword, is White’s invention. The reader does not meet the Orkney children in Malory until they come to Arthur’s court with their mother.17 Queen ends after Morgause’s seduction of Arthur.18 In Malory, Arthur appears to be a willing participant—indeed, by the time he meets Morgause, he is no longer virgin, for he has already slept with Lyonors, who bears him a son, Borre.19 In White, Morgause, the wicked queen, uses the magical spancel and robs the unwitting and innocent Arthur of his virginity. By ending Queen with the seduction scene, White was able to keep Igraine out of his book, and thus avoid completely the touching reconciliation scene related by Malory.20 Like Sir Ector’s wife and the hostess at the inn, Igraine is a war casualty. In Malory, Arthur sees Guenever (after Lyonors, but before Morgause) and immediately falls in love with her.21 The wars with Lot and the other recalcitrant Gaelic kings are, of course, depicted by Malory in Book I. Possibly White received the inspiration for Arthur’s revolutionary concept of warfare from Malory’s ‘comyns of Carlyon [who] aroos with clubbis and stavys and slewe many knyghtes.’22 But Pellinore’s wedding is not recounted in Malory’s Book I; in White, the festivities surrounding it provide the excuse for Morgause’s visiting Arthur’s court. Not until Candle 23 does the reader learn of Arthur’s attempt to kill Mordred.24 Malory tells the reader that Mordred was found on the shore by a good man who fostered him and raised him until he was fourteen years of age, at which time Mordred came to Arthur’s court. In White, the selfish, capricious Morgause raises Mordred, and her upbringing of him is made an important part of the story and contributes significantly to Mordred’s motivation in seeking to wed Guenever and bring about his father’s downfall and destruction. From Book I White also received his inspiration for Lancelot’s Uncle Dap: Malory’s Gwenbaus.25 The war with King Claudas, which takes Arthur abroad to fight on the side of King Ban of Benwick, occurs in Malory in Book I, before Lancelot has come to court. In White, this war requiring Arthur’s absence from England provides Lancelot and Guenever with their idyllic year together.

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Book II. In Chapter 10, Lot dies by Pellinore’s hand,26 thus precipitating the Orkney feud, which leads eventually to the murder of Pellinore’s son Lamorak by Mordred and Gawaine. In White, the news of Lot’s death does not arrive at Camelot until just after Lancelot has come to court.27 Book III contains three pieces of information that are not presented until Knight : Merlyn’s warning about Guenever’s future treachery; Arthur’s wedding to Guenever and his knighting of Gawaine at the wedding-feast; and Gawaine’s slaying of a lady. These are presented in Knight as already having taken place, like Lot’s death, before the beginning of the book, but having occurred after the events described in Queen. Book IV. From Book IV White took Nimue and Merlyn’s trip to Benwick to see Elaine and the young Lancelot28 and made it into a scene for Knight.29 This is the first time that the reader encounters Lancelot in Malory. In Knight, however, White tells the reader that the boy had first met Arthur with his father a few years previously in England just before King Ban embarked to return to France after fighting on Arthur’s side against the Gaelic Kings. In Book IV the reader also learns of Lancelot’s first name—Galahad—which Elaine in Knight will choose for his son.30 Book V. I cannot see that White made any use of the material in Book V. Book VI. White used practically everything in this book. Book VI recounts Lancelot’s quests and ends with Lancelot’s victorious return to Arthur’s court. In Chapter 1 there is the sentence that reads: ‘Thus Sir Launcelot rested hym longe with play and game; and than he thought hymself to preve in straunge adventures.’31 White’s notation here, ‘First effort to escape from Guenever,’ shows that he was thinking about the structure of Knight, which incorporates much of Book VI material in Chapters 7–9 of TOAFK.32 Another White comment has to do with depiction of character: ‘Sir Turquine a sadist and pervert.’ Mordred makes his appearance in Malory’s Book VI.33 Book VII. White uses little of Book VII, which deals mainly with Gareth of Orkney. A sidelight here is that Malory shows Morgause rather sympathetically in this book, coming to court to see how her youngest

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son, Gareth, is doing, and having a chance to visit her other sons, upon whom she has not set eyes for twelve years. This evidence of her maternal concern is naturally omitted by White, as is any extended reference to the fact that her sons marry. In Malory, the wives’ names are given; White simply acknowledges the fact that the men are married. Book VIII. The only incident that White uses from this book is the encounter of Lancelot with Carados.34 Nevertheless, the book is worth noting, for it details the adventures of Sir Lamorak de Galys who, along with Tristram and Lancelot, is one of the best knights in the world. Lamorak is later killed by Gawaine; in Candle,35 Lancelot reflects that he, Lamorak, and Tristram have all been hated by ‘the Old Ones,’ and that of the three only he is left alive. The term ‘the Old Ones’ is used by White to describe the Gaels, or Celts. But if Lamorak de Galys were, as his name implies, from Wales, this would seem to indicate that he too was a Celt. Nowhere in White is the ‘de Galys’ descriptive surname added to Lamorak, perhaps because White knew that recognizing Lamorak as an ‘Old One’ would vitiate his notion that ‘the Old Ones’ had murdered Lamorak. Book IX. I cannot see that White uses any of Book IX. In Chapter 12, however, there is mention of Sir Palomides’s chase of the Questing Beast. White tells the reader in Queen that the Questing Beast had changed her allegiance from Pellinore to Palomides.’36 It is also worth noting that, confronted by the mass of Tristram material in Malory (Books VIII–XII), White is careful to keep Lamorak at a safe distance from Lancelot, just as he does with Tristram himself—he takes no chances of diminishing Lancelot’s eminence as the premier knight of Arthur’s court. Malory himself follows much the same tactic with Gawaine to ensure that Lancelot’s heroic stature remains unchallenged. In addition to neglecting to introduce Tristram as a character, White adopts Malory’s decision to have Lamorak meet his doom off-stage. Book X. In Chapter 24 of Book X, Gaheris kills Morgause and then tells Lamorak that he and Gawaine had slain Lamorak’s father, King Pellinore. Lamorak tells Gaheris that Pellinore did not kill King Lot, but that Balin did. White assigns his mother’s murder specifically to Agravaine. As a character capable of such a deed, Agravaine has been prepared for in Queen when he slays the unicorn who lays his horn in

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the maiden’s lap. This is a clear prefiguration of his mother’s murder. In Chapter 54, Palomides tells Percival about his brother’s murder by Gawaine; in Chapter 58, he speaks of how Mordred came up behind Lamorak and stabbed him in the back. This information comes to the reader in Knight, when Gareth, clutching Arthur’s hand, tells his uncle and Lancelot of Morgause’s death and Lamorak’s butchering.37 Books XI and XII. White relies heavily on Books XI and XII. Practically everything contained in Malory makes its appearance in Knight. There is, of course, in keeping with White’s intention to treat the people and events realistically, an understandable tendency to downplay the miraculous or fabulous parts of the story: no mention is made, for instance, of the dragon which Lancelot dispatches in rescuing Elaine, nor is much prominence given to the Sangreal. Malory’s envisionment of Elaine is given in Chapter 7,38 when he tells the reader that Lancelot thought that Elaine was the fairest woman he had ever seen. Malory’s Elaine is clearly a stunner, making Guenever seem all the more impressive. White takes the easy way out and makes her a frump.39 Books XIII–XVII. White knew that he was going to have trouble when he dealt with the Grail material. He detested Galahad, but realized that the quest for the Sangreal was an essential part of the Arthur story: he would have to take it on whether he wanted to or not. In the event, what he does is to present much of the miraculous material contained in Malory’s Book XIII by obliqua persona, letting the reader learn about the quest for the Sangreal from the mouths of the knights who have returned to Arthur’s court. This narrative method allows White to prevent the reader from confronting directly material too fabulous to accept without a conscious act of will. In his letter to Sir Sydney Cockerell,40 White states, somewhat facetiously, that he does not believe Malory was the author of Books XII–XVII since, in his opinion, there is an absolute change in attitude from Ascham’s ‘bold bawdry’ in the other parts of Malory to what he considers to be the ‘Exact Catholic Dogma’ contained in the Grail books. Further, White takes exception to the idea ‘that the Holy Grail was some life-giving bucket carried about by Celtic fairies.’ White goes on to stress the reasonableness of the quest: Why should not the Holy Grail (Malory’s Holy Grail) have been neither more nor less than the Holy Grail? I don’t know what it was before,

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t.h. white’s troubled heart because before Malory I consider that the whole story was childish, but by Malory’s time it was perfectly sensible to write about a genuine search for a physical object. I want to say that the search for the Grail was as reasonable in the time which Malory thought he was writing about as the search for your own umbrella at the lost property office.41

By allowing the Grail Quest to be told by the survivors of the quest, White underscores the reasonableness of the search. Gawaine, Lionel, Aglovale—and finally Lancelot—come back to court and tell about their adventures to Arthur and Guenever. The cumulative effect of their testimony is to make the Grail Quest seem reasonable indeed. White’s notation of Book XVI shows how he was trying to envision the Grail Quest as a part of the whole fabric of the Arthurian matter: Book XVI makes it quite clear that the new deal meant only fighting on moral grounds. In previous book, Lancelot is not allowed to fight for honor or sport. In 16, rather than fight a brother, you must allow him to kill you. In fact, the whole court has gone metaphysical: a craze for moral philosophy. Cf. page 398 [Book XVII, Chapter 8] ‘Sons, not chieftains—friends not warriors.’ p. 408 [Book XVII, Chapter 20].

White’s concern that the difficult Grail material should fit in with the rest of the story is illustrated even more strongly by the note that he made on the end-paper of his Malory: Grail begins where Lancelot left off. Necessity to reconstitute the Table idea—not ‘pure’ enough. It has resulted in Pellinore’s, Lamorak’s, Morgause’s murder; Tristram’s and Lancelot’s adultery. New ideal needed. Arthur foresees that the new deal must be fundamental—right v. wrong, not Right v. Might—and that this high aim will split the Table. You can’t go too near perfection, yet you must always try to.* Not enough Humility in old ideal…Another reason for starting the Grail Quest was that most of the secular quests of Ideal I had already been cleared up. (Gawaine and Ector complain of this.) Quest II is a measure against the idleness which is nourishing immorality at court. *When Galahad gets there, there is nothing left but to ask for death.

Books XVIII–XX. White uses material from practically all of Malory’s remaining books. From Book XVIII, he uses Chapters 1–8 to describe the affair of the poisoned apple, Chapters 8–20 for the death of Elaine, the Fair Maid of Astolat (whom he combined with the first Elaine), Chapters 21–24 for the episodes where Lancelot is shot in the buttock with an

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arrow, and the great tournament at Westminster, where Arthur takes the opposite side from Lancelot, who is joined by Gareth.42 The Meliagrance affair 43 is taken from Chapter 25 of Book XVIII and Chapters 1–9 of Book XIX. Chapters 10–13 deal with the healing of Sir Urre and take up Knight’s last pages.44 At the conclusion of Chapter 12, White makes a small drawing of a cross in the margin of his Malory followed by the notation: ‘the culmination of an amazing book.’ A pre-Malory version of the healing of Sir Urre has not yet been discovered. This story, quite possibly the finest tale in the Morte Darthur, so full of tension, is original with Malory, and White recognizes its greatness. Candle closely parallels Malory’s Book XX, containing in it the Agravaine and Mordred plotting (chapters which leads up to Lancelot’s rescue of Guenever from the flame). Chapters 9–18 deal with Gawaine’s unsuccessful attempt to revenge himself on Lancelot for Gareth’s death. In the reconciliation scene, Malory’s visualization has given White the chance to follow him very closely. In both White and Malory, Lancelot and Guenever are dressed in tissued material of white and gold, and they carry olive branches. Gawaine’s outburst ‘They called thee right’45 is the same in White as it is in Malory. Chapters 19–22 detailing the siege of Benwick are also used, as is Arthur’s lifting of the siege when he learns of Mordred’s perfidy at home in England. From the last of Malory’s books, Book XXI, White makes use of only the first three chapters for Candle. These describe the battle positions at Salisbury Down. Candle ends on the eve of battle. But Merlyn makes use of some of the remaining material in Book XXI: the incident of the adder, the death of Arthur, Guenever’s retreat to Almesbury, and Lancelot’s last sight of her, the death of Lancelot, and Sir Ector’s lament. What White does not touch in Merlyn is any mention of Excalibur; there has been no mention of Bedivere in TOAFK, and so he ignores the affecting scene at the end of Book XXI when Arthur asks Bedivere to cast his sword into the water. the historical setting In close agreement with what he had written Cockerell, White’s setting for TOAFK is an idealized England, a marvelously wrought Old England of fierce wolves, wild boars, threatening forests, snow at Christmas, and small dragons who hiss like kettles. White’s England is also Gramarye,

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the homeland of King Arthur and his knights, full of castles with bannerets and visored knights who ride overthwart and endlong and who hove brim at fords. Even so, it is a setting made more real to the reader for a general downplaying of the supernatural—Merlyn’s enchantments, as well as Morgan Le Fay’s writhing on her bed of lard are episodes in Sword, White’s first book, the book of childhood. Because Sword is about childhood, the reader is less apt to become critical about the subject matter and the setting. This world of Gramarye may have been what White thought that Malory, dreaming in the fifteenth century, dreamed on; it is, in any case, a world curiously complete in itself, envisioned whole. White saw Arthur neither as a ‘distressed Briton hopping about in a suit of woad in the fifth century,’46 nor as a Romano-British dux bellorum, nor even as a Celtic chieftain—although in his Malory essay he supposes that Arthur ‘would have gone plodding about in cross-gartered small clothes, stuffed with straw, plotting an occasional ambush upon Saxons equally insignificant.’ But White goes on to observe that, ‘This is not the man that Mallory was thinking about.’47 The action in TOAFK takes place between the beginning of the thirteenth century and the end of the fifteenth: from about 1200 until possibly 1485. While the young Arthur is at the Castle Sauvage, Sir Ector receives a letter from Uther Pendragon dated ‘12 Uther.’48 At this time, Arthur and Kay are probably about twelve years old: they have been on an adventure with Robin Wood, are old enough to resent the attentions of the Old Nurse, and still delight in throwing snowballs; the possibility is that Arthur’s birthdate is about the same year as Uther’s ascension to the throne. When Uther’s death is announced, King Pellinore comments, ‘Uther the Conqueror, 1066 to 1216.’49 This would seem to be about four years later than the time when Sir Ector receives Uther’s letter, and would make Arthur’s age around sixteen, roughly in coincidence with the traditional age of fifteen. White’s forward limit of the fifteenth century is reached in memorable fashion when the Bishop of Rochester expresses horror at the thought of Mordred using cannons against his father, and King Arthur speaks to his page ‘Tom of Newbold Revell.’ Set against the actual events of these centuries, Uther (who is portrayed as a Norman), by virtue of his appellation ‘the Conqueror’ and the date

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of 1066 for his birth, is made to be a kind of William the Conqueror (Norman, 1066–1087). The remaining years of Uther’s reign seem to cover the reigns of William II (William Rufus, Norman, 1087–1100), Henry I (Norman, 1100–1135), Stephen (Norman, 1135–1154), Henry II (Plantagenet, 1154–1189), Richard I (Plantagenet, 1189–1199), and John (Plantagenet, 1199–1216). The condition of England when Arthur ascends to the throne is pretty much in keeping with the way it was when John the Bad died: ‘Look at the barns burnt,’ Merlyn tells the Wart, and dead men’s legs sticking out of ponds, and horses with swelled bellies by the roadside, and mills falling down, and money buried, and nobody daring to walk abroad with gold or ornaments on their clothes. That is chivalry nowadays. That is the Uther Pendragon touch.50

This picture of England in chaos before Arthur is recalled later in terrifying detail: When the old King came to his throne it had been an England of armoured barons, and of famine, and of war. It had been the country of trial by red-hot irons.51

For practical purposes, however, White’s idealized time is given the name of the twelfth century: If you happen to live in ‘the twelfth century, or whenever it was,’ he writes in one place,52 and in another, ‘The battle of Bedegraine was...the twelfth century equivalent of what later came to be called a Total War.’53 Further, some of the events, which he depicts as taking place in Arthur’s reign, occurred during the years 1066–1216: the evolution of legal writs and an elementary form of trial by jury came about under the vigorous rule of Henry II; Mordred’s ambition to massacre the Jews was systematically practiced under Richard I, with the Jewish quarter of London being destroyed in 1215 under John. On the other hand, the extravagance of dress, which White describes when Arthur’s court ‘goes modern,’54 fits in well with the sumptuous costumes evolved under Edward III and Richard II. The Gramarye of this idealized century was inhabited by Normans (Galls), who had come over with Uther, by Saxons, and by Old Ones (Gaels). The Normans, of whom Arthur is one, comprise the chivalric aristocracy who, with their Games-Mania and ritualized forms of warfare, act like fox-hunting squires of the nineteenth century. By their unthinking brutality under Uther, they have oppressed the Saxons,

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who actually have preceded them in England, and have kept them as serfs in the posture of a subject race (‘“Baron” had been the equivalent of the modern word of “Sahib”’55). The Old Ones, who were in England centuries before either the Normans or the Saxons, have been harried to Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland, and Brittany. Merlyn gives Arthur a history lesson: ‘About three thousand years ago,’ he said, ‘the country you are riding through belonged to a Gaelic race who fought with copper hatchets. Two thousand years ago they were hunted west by another Gaelic race with bronze swords. A thousand years ago there was a Teuton invasion by people who had iron weapons, but it didn’t reach the whole of the Pictish Isles because the Romans arrived in the middle and got mixed up with it. The Romans went away about eight hundred years ago, and then another Teuton invasion—of people mainly called Saxons—drove the whole rag-bag west as usual. The Saxons were just beginning to settle down when your father the Conqueror arrived with his pack of Normans, and that is where we are today. Robin Wood was a Saxon partizan.’56

The general viewpoint of an idealized twelfth century imagined in the fifteenth is greatly accentuated by White’s multiple references to actual kings as ‘legendary.’57 It is Arthur’s destiny, with a nudge from Merlyn, to try to right the hideous legacy left by his father Uther by quelling Force Majeure, or Fort Mayne, by replacing the philosophy of Might as Right by a rudimentary justice, which will take its most tragic significance when Arthur explains to Guenever and Lancelot that, if Mordred accuses them of treachery, he, the king, under his new code, will be unable to intercede on their behalf. Into Arthur’s lifetime—from his idyllic childhood in the Castle Sauvage, his union with Morgause, his marriage to Guenever, his mounting of the Grail Quest, and all the events leading up to the final tragedy—White has compressed much of the actual history of almost three hundred years, the centuries of the High Middle Ages. White’s technique is beautifully visualized by Shakespeare in a play which White detested: For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, Carrying them here and there, jumping o’er times,

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Turning th’ accomplishment of many years Into an hourglass58

The figure of Merlyn stands independent of White’s time-scheme. He has been born in the future (the only way to get second sight) and is living backwards. His recollection goes ‘back’ to at least the mid nineteenthirties, for he criticizes Arthur’s enthusiasm for war with a reference to Hitler.59 Through the brilliant device of Merlyn, White is able to make use of ironic and humorous historical insights from the fifteenth through the mid-twentieth century. anachronisms TOAFK is full of anachronisms, allusions, and personal recollection. By envisioning for Arthur’s story an idealized century imagined from Malory’s fifteenth century, White opens the door wide for all kinds of anachronisms. However, if one thinks of the time-scheme of TOAFK— Arthur’s story—as a kind of portmanteau into which is packed the trappings of nearly three centuries of history between 1216 and 1485, then the concept is easier to deal with. By a sort of accordion process the low points drop from consideration, and the high points seem closer together: In the smoky vaults, where once the grubby barons had gnawed their bones with bloody fingers, now there were people eating with clean fingers, which they had washed with herb-scented toilet soap out of wooden bowls.60

This sort of advance in table manners took much longer indeed than the few years of Arthur’s reign—and yet by compressing those years into ‘an hourglass’ White succeeds in his effort to picture Arthur as civilization’s champion. Besides, washing hands before meals is pretty frequently mentioned in the High Middle Ages; with Arthur living 1216–1485, there’s plenty of time for the custom to take root. A glance at White’s Malory essay reveals immediately the sensitivity that White showed to both what he believed Malory to be doing and what he himself was planning to do to Malory. In the event, of course, White did indeed follow his careful plan about anachronisms in many places: in the descriptive passages about castles,61 each of which is built in the architectural style of a different century, and in the splendid

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panoramas of medieval life62 which comprehend centuries of history. White usually stays within the 1216–1485 limits, but he occasionally drops back to take advantage of the years 1066–1216, or even earlier: the description of the out Isles is one exception of this kind. But in retrospect it is not the glory of these scenes that captures the imagination. Rather, it is the riotous mishmash of Merlyn’s backward thinking, and his beagling trousers, his walking mustard-pot, Sir Ector’s gruff nineteenthcentury colloquialisms, and Palomides’s Babu English that holds one’s heart in thrall. white’s use of malory’s sources Since the sources for such a very large amount of the extra-Malory material that White uses are relatively easy to ascertain by recourse to White’s books and journals, it may be more defensible than it initially appears to be to say flatly that White made little or no use of Malory’s own sources in writing TOAFK. Furthermore, he simply wasn’t interested in them. None of White’s copies of Malory—except for the Vinaver edition, which shows no indication of ever having been read—speaks much about Malory’s sources, and the Strachey edition ignores them almost completely. Nor are any of White’s other books (save one) concerned with Malory’s sources. Neither is there any mention made of them in White’s journals, save for the ill-tempered broadsides he levels at them en masse in his unpublished notes on Malory.63 On the basis of what I have learned about White, it seems to me unlikely that, before he began TOAFK, he availed himself in any systematic way of acquaintance with Malory’s own sources. My feeling is that, for his story, White relied entirely on his Strachey Malory. As far as the story goes, it appears that Malory explains everything in TOAFK that isn’t White’s invention; there are no obvious gaps. Before leaving the question of how well acquainted White was with Malory’s sources, it might be well to stress that, even as Malory himself stripped the vestiges of that elaborate code of courtly love and courtly heroism from the chivalry that he saw not as an idealized ritual but as an achievable form of personal honor, so too White, anxious to see the men and women in Malory as human beings, simply found it inconvenient and uncongenial to rely on older sources. Rather than simply being ignorant of Malory’s sources, White may have found

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nothing in them that would assist him in achieving his artistic purpose of characterization and motivation; they were too distant. white’s use of arthurian scholarship White does not appear to have availed himself of much contemporary Arthurian scholarship. His letters to Sir Sydney Cockerell, David Garnett, and L.J. Potts are full of references to Sir Thomas Malory, but contain the names of only two Malory critics, Sebastian Evans and George Wardle, neither of whom is mentioned in Vinaver’s lengthy ‘Bibliography of Critical Works’ contained in Works. Despite the work that had been accomplished by George Lyman Kittredge and his student Edward Hicks, White’s knowledge of Malory’s life at least as late as 1940 can be fairly termed sketchy.64 Nor does turning to White’s own library afford one any real satisfaction. Granted, it is a risky business to try to judge a man’s interests from the books he owns, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that one might be able to tell something about the man’s interests from looking at his books. Consulting the catalogue of White’s books taken from his house in Alderney after his death, one can tell a great deal about the man and his interests, but one of the things that one can’t tell is that White was particularly interested in Malory scholarship. Out of the more than four hundred books in White’s library, only one with a publication date of before 1958—the date of TOAFK—is concerned with Arthurian literature or criticism.65 Except for the salvos loosed in his Malory essays, White’s journals are as silent about Malory scholarship as they are unforthcoming about Malory sources. A rough idea of the enthusiasm with which White was likely to greet the views of Arthurian scholars can be gained by perusing the comments that White made on the page of Weston’s book where she discusses Chrétien’s treatment of the incident of the Knight of the Cart and its possibly ancient origins: The highest praise in this woman’s repertoire is to say that you are a myth, the blackest disgrace to be a literary triumph, i.e. Jack & Jill is better than Hamlet. And you are a school marm and nought else.

Although White forbore in TOAFK from this kind of ad hominem approach to the work accomplished by Malory scholars, he allowed his ire to fulminate freely in the last pages of Merlyn when he took aim at

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a whole congeries of critics, including the luckless Weston, from whose book he could have learned almost all of the names he mentions: A book called The High History of the Holy Grail, which was translated by an irascible scholar called Dr. Sebastian Evans, says…that [Arthur] was safely buried in a house of religion ‘that standeth at the head of the Moors Adventurous.’ A Miss Jessie L. Weston mentions a manuscript which she pleases to call 1533…in which it is stated that the queen who came to carry him away was none other than the aged enchantress Morgan, his half-sister, and that she took him to a magic island. Dr. Sommer regards the whole account as absurd. A lot of people called Wolfram von Eschenbach, Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, Dr. Wechssler, Professor Zimmer, Mr. Nutt and so forth, either scout the question wholly, or remain in learned confusion.66

A very little of this attitude goes a long way, indeed, but it is unfortunately not unrepresentative of White’s posture toward what he considered to be poachers on the Malory preserve. Nothing that I have come across leads me to believe that White was curious about contemporary Arthurian scholarship, or even that he was greatly interested in scholarship dealing with Malory. For example, the questions he had about Malory’s life could easily have been settled by recourse to a book which was published by Oxford University Press the year White graduated from Cambridge, the 1929 edition of Eugène Vinaver’s Malory. This book took into account the work done by Hicks (1928) and his mentor, George Lyman Kittredge (1897), and would have been readily available. For that matter, the furor surrounding the discovery of the Winchester manuscript and its implications so far as any serious student of Malory is concerned seems to have escaped his notice completely, although it must be pointed out that White’s emphasis on Arthur’s code of chivalry as the civilizing influence in a debased and chaotic world was, to his credit, largely a matter of his own invention and oddly enough paralleled one of the effects that the Winchester find would have on the Caxton material. On the contrary, everything I have encountered thus far suggests that, while he may not have been much interested in Malory criticism and scholarship, White was passionately interested in, first, his Strachey Malory and, second, the historical sidelights of the almost three

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hundred years that he envisioned as the idealized century dreamed of by Malory. white as antiquarian If White had few credentials as a scholar, he enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as an antiquary, a term he rather fancied, even referring to Malory as such.67 To many readers, the little touches in TOAFK are what make the story unique and infinitely rewarding: bits of natural history, folklore, ancient legends, expertise in matters of jousting and hunting, furniture-building, architecture, stained-glass, manners, and fashions of dress. It is an immensely profitable experience to track down White’s antiquarian sources: one of the charms of TOAFK is to whet one’s curiosity about the times of which White wrote so movingly. White himself was fascinated by history, not simply the broad economic and religious and social upheavals, but the small sharp insights into the people and their stories. One will probably never know how many of the ten books a day White said he was in the habit of reading were concerned with medieval subjects. Certainly the catholicity of his interests is well attested to by the books in his library, and a large number of them deal with life and art in the Middle Ages. Although White used dozens of sources in writing TOAFK, a great many of them are directly traceable to the books contained in his library. Of the more than four hundred titles that are listed from White’s library, four were published before 1650, nine during the years 1650–1700, seven during the years 1700–1750, twelve during the years 1750–1800, and nineteen during the years 1800–1850. This gives a total of fifty-one volumes, or one-eighth of his library, that were published a hundred years prior to 1950. Many of these books are old histories of England, Scotland, and Ireland, or about hunting, falconry, armor, heraldry, forest law, and natural history. I have examined some of White’s books and the markings in them, and have determined that he used the following in writing TOAFK. From Macalister’s Ireland in Pre-Celtic Times, White got the notion of the first inhabitants of England as being ‘some earlier crew of esquimaux who lived on shells.’68 A. Steinmetz’s Romance of Duelling reminded him of the story of the judicial duel between the Earl of Salisbury and the Bishop of Salisbury (‘under the supposed King Edward III’69),

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when the bishop’s champion had prayers sewn on his clothes under his armor. From the lengthy disquisition on brigandines in James G. Mann’s pamphlet Armour in Essex, he was able to focus attention on this item of clothing in the scene of Sir Urre.70 From this source, too, he got the delightful ‘pyssyng basyn of silver’ and lists of other contents of the barrel in Lancelot’s armory.71 The helm-trick of Reynaud de Roy72 is, like Hoodman’s Bluff, and James I’s remark about hawking,73 from Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1876). From Thomas Browne’s 1642 edition of Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Enquiries Into Vulgar and Common Errors, White learned the story of the Countess of Holland, which in turn reminded him of the miraculous Countess of Henneberge, who gave birth to 365 children at one time.74 This story he had found in John Russell Reinhard’s Medieval Pageant (1939). From Crump and Jacob’s Legacy of the Middle Ages (1938), White had found information he was to use about furniture, architecture, and tapestries, and how they developed through the Middle Ages. From this source, too, came his remarks about Richard I’s Gaillard, about Villars de Honnecourt,75 the charming mnemonic song ‘Barbara Celarent Darii Ferioque Prioris,’76 as well as the origin of the term ‘without benefit of clergy.’ There is much contained in Crump about calligraphy, and White’s notations make it abundantly clear that his attention to Gawaine’s miniscule77 (in addition to being influenced by the printed and written Irish of the thirties based on the insular script) came from these pages. White was in like manner indebted to J.J. Jusserand’s book English Wayfaring Life in the XIV Century (originally published in 1889), where he gathered such items as Llewelyn’s head stuck on the palings of London Bridge,78 the fashions of court clothes, the picture of the outlaw and his ‘weyve,’79 the remarkable Mme. Trote de Salerno who was able to use her ears as a handkerchief and let her eyebrows hang down behind her shoulders.80 The costs of manuscripts and the protocol surrounding banishment of felons to Dover were likewise found in Jusserand, as well as much other background information that White put to use. Victor Duruy’s History of France supplied White with stories about the great magicians Raymond Lull, Albertus Magnus, and Roger Bacon, and from Cross’s Ancient Irish Tales, from the Vision of Mac Conglinne, he was able to construct the Castle Chariot’s drawbridge of butter that Kay and the Wart cross on their

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adventure with Robin Wood.81 In Reinhard’s Medieval Pageant (besides learning about the impressive feat of the Countess of Henneberge), White also found information on the great gibbet at Montfaucon82 with its sixteen pillars, that lepers were called ‘Measles,’83 and the parental concern of the Knight of the Tower Landry.84 Sir Sydney Cockerell’s loan of a book on heraldry 85 provided White with what he wanted to know (and probably more than that, since he wrote in the margin ungratefully that he found the book ‘tiresome’) about shields, quarterings, blazons, tinctures, and the like. Two examples of White’s technique in putting real people and places in TOAFK serve to illustrate his skill. One of the most delightful episodes in Sword is the visit of Master William Twiti, huntsman to King Uther Pendragon, who pays a visit to Sir Ector’s Castle Sauvage for the Boxing Day boar hunt. All join in the hunt, which White describes in vivid detail. In killing the boar, Twiti’s hound Beaumont is fatally gored and, to save Beaumont from further suffering, Twiti asks Robin Wood (who has accompanied the party) to put the animal out of his misery: He stroked Beaumont’s head and said, ‘Hark to Beaumont. Softly, Beaumont, mon amy. Oyez à Beaumont the valiant. Swef, le douce Beaumont, swef, swef.’ Beaumont licked his hand but could not wag his tail. The huntsman nodded to Robin, who was standing behind, and held the hound’s eyes with his own. He said, ‘Good dog, Beaumont the valiant, sleep now, old friend Beaumont, good old dog.’ Then Robin’s falchion let Beaumont out of this world, to run free with Orion and roll among the stars.86

Now it happens that William Twiti was indeed a real person, the huntsman to King Edward II, and his book Le Art de venerie,87 along with the Duke of York’s Master of Game and The Boke of St. Albans 88 was one of the most famous of the late medieval hunting treatises. Twiti’s favorite hound in Le Art de venerie 89 was called Beaumont. Throughout this chapter of TOAFK, White has used almost word for word the proper language of the chase as given by Twiti. Sword was written in 1936–37. In 1944, after White’s beloved setter Brownie died, he wrote Garnett: ‘I stayed with the grave for one week, so that I could go out twice a day and say “Good girl: sleepy girl: go to sleep, Brownie.” It was a saying she understood.’90 The parallel is poignantly

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close between White’s bereavement and Twiti’s words in Sword. Another evidence of White’s talent for using real places and events in TOAFK occurs some pages earlier in Sword, when Sir Ector and Sir Grummore Grummorsum are talking over port: Sir Ector said, ‘Had a good quest today?’ Sir Grummore said, ‘Oh, not so bad. Rattlin’ good day, in fact. Found a chap called Sir Bruce Saunce Pité choppin’ off a maiden’s head in Weedon Bushes, ran him to Mixbury Plantation in the Bicester, where he doubled back, and lost him in Wicken Wood. Must have been a good twenty-five miles as he ran.’ ‘A straight-necked ’un,’ said Sir Ector.91

The flavor here is pure Surtees, and a glance at Bailly’s Hunting Directory locates Sir Grummore Grummorsum’s activities right in the middle of Buckinghamshire, in the country of the Grafton Hunt, with whose pack White hunted while he was a master at Stowe. His love of the past and refusal to have much truck with the present was nowhere more obvious than when White set out to train a falcon by using old books, in ways that, as Warner points out, ‘Shakespeare would have accepted as traditional.’92 There is no doubt that White liked to show off his specially acquired knowledge in almost the same way as he was house-proud about his scarlet-and-black kitchen in Alderney. He appears much like a lonely bachelor host who delights in showing an unexpected benighted visitor through his ancient house, pointing out the creaking stairs, the cobwebbed oriel window, and the mildewed great canopy bed that Prince Rupert once slept in. The nature of the antiquary is to be drawn to the marvellous. This, coupled with a native reclusiveness, is likely to accentuate his eremetical leanings once the visitor has departed. So, I feel, was it with White: without the comfort of anyone to share the intimacy either of his body or his mind—his superb and constant letterwriting surely must have become a substitute for the sounding-board that intimacy is likely to provide for a writer—White turned in upon himself, created from the books he read and the materials of his spirit something which had not existed before and which would outlast him. Certainly even by the time he was writing TOAFK, some of the books

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he used must have already been superseded by scholarly works of more recent date. But his intention was not to write a scholarly work, it was to create a dream-world. As he confided to the end-paper of his copy of Bulwer-Lytton’s Last of the Barons: ‘Arthur’s court is an El Dorado I have therefore tried to make a sort of fanciful fairyland out of the whole of the Morte Darthur.’ If one judges his performance in terms of his expressed intention, there is no question but that White was successful in accomplishing what he set out to do. After consideration of his anachronistic approach and the books with which he surrounded himself in writing TOAFK, the picture that emerges of White is of a man with his face fixed resolutely toward the past. He was passionately curious about people in the past and how they regarded the life around them. His aching sympathy with the tragic figure of Barbellion is a case in point.93 For his own time, White reserved his dismay and disgust. As he wrote in his journal: ‘The fact of the matter is that I think the whole human race is mad, evil and contemptible.’ Recourse to his envisioned world of chivalry was his only solace. white and the celtic influence By the time that White was writing Knight and rewriting Queen, his decision to cast Morgause and her Orkney brood—and by extension all ‘the Old Ones’ from Scotland, Cornwall, Ireland, and Wales—as Gaels or Celts caused him no twinges of conscience. His love affair with Ireland and the Celts was definitely on the wane, although he was struggling nobly to come to grips with the maddeningly elusive ghost of early Irish history while he was studying the origins of the godstone on Inniskea. His researches would eventually take form as The Godstone and the Blackymor,94 and they were assisted in large part from his perusal of Macalister, Wood-Martin, and de Jubainville, whose books White had bought on his Easter trip to Dublin in 1940. White remained indifferent enough to the contribution which Celtic literature had made to the Arthurian tradition that he showed no intention of deviating from Malory in favor of the older versions, even though he had the books in front of him and had read at least some of them.95 Although White admitted that Arthur (‘if he existed’) was a Celt, he scoffed at the notion of the Holy Grail. Much more his idea of the

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ancient Celts and their native habitat were Morgause and her children existing in their stony castle in the out Isles; for their description, and the description of the villagers who greet King Pellinore and Sir Palomides, White saved the distillate of his dislike. Ancient Welsh and Irish literature contains a great deal of importance to the story of Arthur. White’s utter reliance on Malory for the story line of his novel is apparent when one realizes that White not only had access to this material but simply chose to ignore it even when, in one case, it could have helped him paint Morgause even blacker than he did. Both in the Irish ‘Dhiarmada Agus Ghrainne’ and ‘Tochmare Étaine’ parallels with the Arthurian legend reveal themselves. Midir in ‘Tochmarc Étaine’ comes after his lovely wife Étain, who through enchantment and reincarnation has married the king, Eochaid; he is known as ‘the ploughman,’ an appellation Eochaid shares with Arthur. Here Midir, the Mordred-figure, seeks only to regain what he has lost. In Welsh poetry, Modred is Arthur’s nephew and not his son. Had White wished to avoid the sexual transgression of Arthur and capitalize on Morgause’s wickedness, he could have used the idea of fosterage (common in much earlier Irish stories)—Mordred, like his brothers before him, coming to Arthur’s court—and pictured Morgause as giving it out that Mordred was Arthur’s son, a rumor that Arthur, still innocent, would have been powerless to deny. Even so, the theory that Gawaine and Mordred were really representative of the two sides of an original Celtic personality, ‘the earlier Gawaine [being] at once Arthur’s nephew and eventual slayer of his father-uncle,’96 was also met with characteristic unresponsiveness by White. White does, however, make use of at least two stories from the Old Irish: The Vision of Mac Conglinne, which he used in Sword,97 and the poem that he appropriated word-for-word from Cross and Slover’s presentation of Kuno Meyer’s translation of the twelfth-century Aislinge Meic Con Glinne.98 In Queen,99 St. Toirdealbhach, the bloody-minded Orkney version of Merlyn, recounts to the children of Morgause the gory tale of ‘King Conor Mac Nessa.’ This, too, is a story included in Cross and Slover, but

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White has taken pains with it, putting it into an Irish idiom befitting St. Toirdealbhach and injecting a good deal of humor. Another story 100 related by St. Toirdealbhach—about the little girl who attracts a ship to wreck upon the coast by stirring in a well—is most probably out of the fund of Irish folklore which White in his early days in Ireland was accustomed to jot down in his notebooks. One of the only other important borrowings from the Celtic comes about in Gawaine’s dialogue in Queen and Candle. In Queen, the reader is told that the Orkney children, up in the tower of Morgause’s castle were whispering in Gaelic. Or rather, they were whispering in a strange mixture of Gaelic and the Old Language of chivalry—which had been taught to them because they would need it when they were grown. They had little English. In later years, when they became famous knights at the court of the great king, they were to speak English perfectly—all of them except Gawaine, who, as head of the clan, was to cling to a Scots accent on purpose, to show that he was not ashamed of his birth.101

We here infer that White has made an equation between the ‘Gaelic’ spoken by the children (and which, save for Gawaine, they will grow out of using), and the ‘Scots accent’ which Gawaine clings to throughout his life. In point of fact, the ‘Gaelic’ idiom that the boys use in Queen is more Irish than Scottish, reminiscent really of the fabricated Kiltartan brogue employed by Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, and others in their production for the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. In Gawaine’s recital of his Grail quest in Knight and in his dialogue in Candle, however, White sticks to his original premise. Gawaine does indeed speak ‘braid Scots.’ Unfortunately, ‘braid Scots’ is not in any way related to the speech of the Gaelic Highlands; it is simply the old Northumbrian dialect with a later overlay of Scandinavian. Furthermore, the Orkneys of the time in which Malory wrote spoke a different kind of Scandinavian again. If White were aware of the options that were open to him, he gave no indication of it. It is one of the anomalies of TOAFK that White himself was unaware of many that he had included, and the inconsistency of his dialect between Queen and Candle is one such example. Faced with the possibility of bending the story line provided by Malory, White stuck loyal to his source. His only other sources were the historical and antiquarian books which, paraphrasing White’s words to

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David Garnett, could put the seltzer bubbles of envisioned color into the still wine of narrative. 102

‘tennyson and people of that sort’ Along with the Gaels and Arthurian scholars, the Victorians receive a blanket disapproval from White. Especially does he take strong exception to Tennyson, whose ‘muslin dreams’103 are at such dramatic variance with his own realistically envisioned character motivations. White sees his characters as living people, not as what he considers to be the dehumanized embodiment of allegorized virtues. Admittedly, White’s acute ear for the nuances of dialogue are miles away from the consistently heightened diction and frequent archaisms of Tennyson. White’s story is much, much closer to Malory’s than to Tennyson’s. White’s envisionment of Lancelot’s and Guenever’s world, although no less fanciful than Tennyson’s, is held in sharper focus with generally far more attention given to concrete detail than that afforded by Tennyson. But yet in White’s choice of a canvas on which to weave his tapestry, has he not chosen one that has had laundered from it a great many of the traces of stain left ‘by the adulterous finger of a time / That hovered between war and wantonness:’104 Tennyson’s own appraisal of Malory? White’s decision not to write a grittily realistic novel can be partially explained only by saying that he did not want to disaffect the audience that found Sword enchanting; there is simply no way that Queen can be considered a children’s book. Only by admitting that White was as loath as Tennyson to see his characters in anything other than an idealized light—whether the idealization was of virtue (Lancelot, Arthur) or vice (Morgause, Mordred)—can one explain White’s reluctance to depict his characters in the raw. As the recalcitrant legatee of the Victorian system which he so much deplored, qualified by birth and schooling, White himself perpetuates the very same set of values that he is at constant pains to deride. On a deeper level, there is perhaps also some similarity in vision between White and Tennyson: both writers appear to share the view of Arthur bringing order to a hostile, chaotic world through the establishment of his chivalry. Contrary to medieval tradition, both Tennyson and White depict the wastes of England before Arthur’s

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accession to the throne as wild, peopled by outlaws and infested by wolves, cut loose from the civilized traditions embodied by the eagles of the legions. Each sees Arthur as the prince who supplants the old, bloody tradition of Fort Mayne (although Tennyson doesn’t use the term) with chivalric justice. With White, the development from chaos to the King’s Justice is a more sophisticated process than with Tennyson, and more sensitively imagined. By lumping ‘Tennyson and people of that sort’ all together, White consigns to a common hell all other Victorian writers who found the Arthurian material inspiring: Rossetti, for example, or Swinburne, whose ‘Tristram of Lyonesse’ is among the best of his works, and William Morris as well. It seems a pity that one does not know if White was at all familiar with Morris’s protean figure in the forefront of the Victorian landscape.105 Surely poems like ‘Sir Peter Harpdon’s End,’ ‘The Haystack in the Floods’ or ‘Concerning Geffray Teste Noire,’ poems which were inspired by the code of chivalry of the fifteenth century, should have impressed him favorably. Especially ‘The Defence of Guenevere’ should have recommended itself, kindling admiration in White for Morris’s uncompromising cleanness of line, his refusal to deal in modifiers, and his skill in narrative technique. Morris’s depiction of Guenevere, for example, as a defiant, proud woman facing her accusers is close in spirit to White’s imperious Gwen. It somehow in some small way is a diminishment of White’s achievement that he was so eager to stake out Malory for himself to the exclusion of all others that he turned a cold shoulder on fine work done by other men. One notices with some amusement, however, that, when he thought about finishing with the Arthur material, White included Tennyson’s name among the immortals whom he saw himself sitting with when he sauntered off to Olympus, and was obviously not above including in his lament to Brownie (‘slip into my bosom and be lost in me’) Tennyson’s own words from ‘A Princess.’

From the Journals of T.H. White Printed by kind permission of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Chapter Four Omitted and Minor Characters

T

here exists in TOAFK a number of minor female characters as well as a number of characters present in Malory omitted by White worthy of note, the majority of whom appear (or do not) in Sword, the book of Arthur’s childhood. Since, however, the women other than Elaine who appear in later books of TOAFK must be considered major figures worthy of chapters in their own rights, I shall include my discussion of Elaine with those women who haunt the pages of Sword. This early book contains four minor characters that are women: the governess of the Castle Sauvage, who is introduced and then dropped from sight on the first page of Sword; the Old Nurse who is, like the Sergeant-at-Arms, a broadly humorous figure; Maid Marian, Robin Wood’s wood-sprite wife and playmate; and Morgan Le Fay, the loathly chatelaine of the Castle Chariot. Providing a softer and more traditionally feminine note than any of these four women is Lyo-lyok, the Wart’s gentle guide when Merlyn changes him into a grey goose. Before discussing White’s minor female characters in TOAFK, and their individual and aggregate contribution to the establishment of an atmosphere in the work, one might do well to examine three leads which Malory had given White in the small amount of material that he wrote covering the same period of Arthur’s life as Sword, but which White for reasons of his own chose to ignore more or less completely. White could have used these leads to develop Malory’s characters on his own much as he elaborated Sir Grummore Grummorsum, King Pellinore, and Sir Palomides, all triumphs of ornamentation; but he did not do so. The three women whom Malory uses in the story of the birth and upbringing of Arthur1 are Queen Igraine, Arthur’s mother; Sir Ector’s wife; and the hostess at the inn in London.

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t.h. white’s troubled heart A. WOMEN IN MALORY WHOM WHITE OMITS

queen igraine Malory, in his Book of Merlin in The Tale of King Arthur, White’s major source for Sword, devotes little space to Arthur’s childhood and upbringing at Sir Ector’s. Indeed, from the time when Arthur is received by Merlin at the ‘pryvye posterne’2 until he accompanies the newly knighted Kay as his squire to the tournament in London, the reader knows nothing of him from Malory except that he was christened at Sir Ector’s and was given to Sir Ector’s wife to nurse.3 But if there is little in Malory about Arthur’s childhood, there is a great deal about his birth. The reader is given in Malory’s early pages a thorough introduction to the events preceding and surrounding it. The reader is told of King Uther Pendragon and his burning love for Igraine, the wife of the Duke of Cornwall. The reader learns how Igraine, taking offense at Uther’s attentions, persuaded her husband to flee from Uther’s castle. The reader sees how Uther, learning of this, becomes ‘wonderly wroth;’4 of how Uther besieged the castle Terrabil, where the Duke of Cornwall had taken refuge; of how Uther fell ‘seke for angre and for love of fayre Igrayne, that [he might] not be hool;’5 of how Merlin’s help was enlisted, and of how he obtained from the king assurances that, in return for helping Uther attain his heart’s wish, Uther would deliver to Merlin the child of his union with Igraine; of how Merlin by his magical arts transformed Uther into the likeness of the Duke of Cornwall and gained him entrance to Igraine at Castle Tintagil; of how the Duke of Cornwall, seeing Uther leave the siege of Castle Terrabil, issued forth ready to do battle and by his own efforts was himself killed some three hours before Uther perfected his desires upon Igraine; of how, after a period of mourning, Igraine was accorded with Uther and was married to him; of how within six months after their marriage Igraine grew large with child, and of how Uther explained to her what had happened. It is not until The Queen of Air and Darkness that the reader is presented with this information, and then it is told obliquely, from the Orkney point of view.6 The Wart’s mother is not mentioned in Sword. There is no mention of Igraine until Queen, and, further, there is no mention later of Arthur’s touching meeting with her, as there is in Malory, when he first learns of his disastrous mating with Morgause.7

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sir ector’s wife The single hint that Malory gives about Arthur’s childhood, contained in his own sources, which White chose to ignore when writing Sword, occurs in this sentence: ‘And so sir Ectors wyf nourysshed hym with her owne pappe.’8 The earliest mention of Sir Ector’s wife and her duties to the young Arthur is given by Malory when Merlin first goes to Uther and, in exchange for helping him achieve his liaison with Igraine, elicits from the king a promise to deliver to him the infant at the postern gate. To assuage his misgivings, Merlin tells the king: I knowe a lord of yours in this land that is a passyng true man and a feithful, and he shal have the nourysshyng of your child; and his name is sir Ector, and he is a man of fair lyvelode in many partyes in Englond and Walys. And this lord, sir Ector, lete hym be sent for for to come and speke with you, and desyre hym yourself, as he loveth you, that he will put his owne child to nourisshynge to another woman and that his wyf nourisshe yours. And whan the child is borne lete it be delyverd to me at yonder pryvy posterne uncrystned.9

Nor is this the last the reader hears in Malory of Sir Ector’s wife. Immediately after Arthur, in Sir Ector’s presence, pulls out the sword from the stone and Ector asks him, ‘woll ye be my good and gracious lord when ye are kyng?’ Arthur replies to him: ‘Els were I to blame…for ye are the man in the world that I am most beholdyng to, and my good lady and moder your wyf that as wel as her owne hath fostred me and kepte.’10 So singularly touching a clue to the early years of Arthur might be supposed to be seized upon by a novelist, particularly a novelist, like White, clearly at such pains to follow Malory as he did in other places. This is the kind of image that any poet or novelist would be delighted to find, especially because of the skimpiness of other material dealing with those years, and it is a picture which could have easily provided a spark for an entire scene. It may well be, however, that Malory himself raised a question that is unanswerable. If Arthur was nursed by Sir Ector’s wife, then she must have had a younger son than Kay, who would have been Arthur’s age.

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the hostess at the inn White’s omitting mention of the hostess at the London inn at which Sir Ector, Kay, and Wart stayed during the tournament is, although noteworthy, relatively insignificant. Malory tells the reader that Sir Ector had ‘grete lyvelode’ about London, and rode to the jousts there with Kay and Arthur, and that Kay had left his sword at his ‘faders lodgyng,’ and that ‘whan [Arthur] cam home [seeking the sword] the lady and al were out to see the joustyng.’11 White is more explicit, at least about Sir Ector’s ‘lyvelode’ (interpreted in the Glossary to Works as being ‘possessions’ or ‘estates’12). He tells the reader that London was full to the brim. If Sir Ector had not been lucky enough to own a little land in Pie Street, on which there stood a respectable inn, they would have been hard put to it to find a lodging. But he did own it, and as a matter of fact drew most of his dividends from that source, so they were able to get three beds between the five of them.13

This elaboration on Malory’s few words about their lodging does not carry over to a like elucidation when Arthur returns for Kay’s missing sword: ‘When he got to the inn it was closed. Everybody had thronged to see the famous tournament, and the entire household had followed after the mob.’14 The effect of this is to cut out what in the original had been a distinct touch of verisimilitude. By modern standards, writers are not supposed to introduce characters at any length who will not be made use of later in the story. White, if he had followed Malory, need not have feared that the figure of the hostess would be superfluous. She adds a fine touch in Malory. Mention of the hostess gives the reader much more of an idea of a real household with real people—something White was clearly at pains to do earlier when he went to such lengths to describe Sir Ector’s holding in Pie Street. It is a touch left out, significant for no more perhaps than that White, given a chance for inclusion or omission of a female character, was apt to omit rather than to include. White’s distrust of women, particularly in roles of responsibility or of motherhood, is apparent almost from the first lines of Sword. If it is rewarding to view the way in which White chose not to make use of the few female characters furnished by Malory in his account of Arthur’s early years, it is no less rewarding to notice White’s invention

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in supplying to the story of those same years in Sword original female characters not contained in Malory. There are five of these: the governess, the old Nurse, Maid Marian, Morgan Le Fay, and Lyo-lyok. B. WHITE’S MINOR WOMEN

the governess As Warner has pointed out, Sword allowed White to give himself a boyhood without a mother.15 He also had the great pleasure of envisioning himself as Merlyn.16 The stature and magnificence of Merlyn as a literary creation is greatly enhanced by having his entrance into Sword delayed until the second chapter, when the Wart meets him in the Forest Sauvage while searching for Cully. But it is unreasonable to expect that Kay and the Wart would have had no education; some preparation was needed, something to act as contrast, and the character of the governess fits well into White’s country-house scheme. White mentions the governess in the very first paragraph and then drops her: The governess was always getting muddled with her astrolabe, and when she got specially muddled she would take it out of the Wart by rapping his knuckles…The governess had red hair and some mysterious wound from which she derived a lot of prestige by showing it to the women of the castle, behind closed doors. It was believed to be where she sat down, and to have been caused by sitting on some armour at a picnic by mistake. Eventually she offered to show it to Sir Ector, who was Kay’s father, had hysterics and was sent away. They found out afterwards that she had been in a lunatic hospital for three years.17

Mention of the governess, with her mysterious wound, which she shows to other women only behind closed doors, with her hysterics, and with the revelation after her discharge that she had been confined in a lunatic asylum for three years provides extremely suggestive clues to an understanding of White’s attitude toward women in general and toward his mother, Constance White, in particular. This is the first paragraph of the book, and one cannot help but notice that White has put the governess in this place of prominence and exposed her to ridicule (without giving her a name and so withholding an identity with whom the reader might otherwise sympathize), by having her suffer an injury in a particularly comical fashion: the governess sits on armor at a picnic. Here the risibilities invited are of a gross childish

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sort, and the delight that one takes in the incongruous and humorous juxtaposition of governess/sits/armor/picnic helps White succeeds in his evident purpose, which is to treat the governess, traditionally a symbol of female authority, with disparagement and ridicule. The tone is somehow unseemly, and one’s natural distaste for the antics of the governess is enhanced by the residual repugnance that the words ‘behind closed doors’18 leave with one. Disliking the governess, one is pleased to find that one’s laughter at her discomfiture is both agreeable and permissible. White, the stage manager, has already arranged for the reader’s absolution from guilt by justifying the governess’s discharge from Sir Ector’s service by allowing it to come as a direct result of her attempted violation of a basic social taboo when she offers to show her ‘mysterious’ wound to Sir Ector. It is remarkable that the governess’s offense is in the attempt merely, since it neatly permits White to escape the necessity of placing the unwitting Sir Ector in the position of a voyeur, which would compromise his knightly image as young Arthur’s guardian. To alienate even further the reader’s sympathies from such a foolish woman and to consolidate her reputation for silliness and instability, White makes the governess dissolve in hysterics before he drops her from the story, unlamented. Her wound, acquired in such ludicrous fashion, is clearly not ‘mysterious’ at all and is evidence once more of the feminine propensity for exaggeration. She must be gotten rid of and her successor, Merlyn, well prepared for; it will be a happy world for the boys without the governess, and White can hardly wait to see the last of her. By avoiding mention of Sir Ector’s wife, who in White’s source nourished the young Arthur at her own bosom and who might have been expected to provide a soft relief to the harsh business of chivalry in the Forest Sauvage, and by introducing the governess in this manner, White induces the reader to associate women with instability, with unpredictability, with capriciousness; the view received is a particularly strong one when the reader sees, as here, through the eye of childhood. The female figure is in a position of authority, able to wield absolute powers of pleasure and pain.

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the old nurse It is not merely social tact that prevented White from writing ‘ladies’ instead of ‘women’ when he imagined an audience behind closed doors for a viewing of the governess’s ‘mysterious wound.’19 By beginning the book in medias res, freed from the necessity of taking into account the love affair between Uther and Igraine, or, for that matter, not having to say anything about Igraine at all, and choosing not to follow Malory’s lead on Sir Ector’s wife, White chose to have no ladies whatever in his book—some women, perhaps, but no ladies. Sword takes place in a totally bachelor society, one which (perhaps because of its bachelor status) is happy; it is worth noting that the crockery in Merlyn’s cottage in the woods is well schooled to clean itself up. The badger in his college rooms gets along very well. White may have had some affectionate recollection of his ayah from when he was a child in India. It may have been because he did not wish to omit entirely the one significant clue about Arthur’s childhood given by Malory. He may have felt instinctively that a totally womanless household at the Castle Sauvage was, artistically speaking, an unsound proposition. Whatever the cause, White invented the Old Nurse for Sword. Her character is, in E.M. Forster’s phrase, ‘flat,’ broadly humorous, and given to malapropisms: ‘“Look at your poor eye, I do declare. It’s enough to baffle the college of sturgeons.”’20 ‘“There, there,” she sobbed. “His loyal highness dead and gone, and him such a respectful gentleman. Many’s the illuminated picture I’ve cut out of him, from the Illustrated Missals.” ’21 ‘“Well, his heir,” said Sir Grummore, rather taken aback. “Our blessed monarch,” said the Nurse tearfully, “never had no hair. Anybody that studied the loyal family knowed that.”’22 The Old Nurse provides the sole note of feminine solicitude in the Castle Sauvage. She has apparently served in Sir Ector’s family for some forty years23 and is not too much in awe of her employer to give him a piece of her mind when she feels he deserves it.24 She worries about the boys’ clothing and fusses over them when they are cold and wet.25 When Arthur is crowned, she sends him ‘a cough mixture, thirty dozen handkerchiefs all marked, and a pair of combinations with a double chest.’26 Though the Old Nurse is a comic figure, White handles her on the whole sympathetically. If one purpose of the Old Nurse in the story

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is, as I have suggested, to fulfill in some way the function performed by Sir Ector’s wife in Malory, then White may have felt that, by relegating the performance of that function to a woman of a lower social order, he would do away with the risk of dealing with a well-born woman in a position of authority, one example of which, clearly raising antagonism in White, is the governess. The Old Nurse, with her fussing and her malapropisms, is one way to keep the specter of female authority at arm’s length. At least once, however, his feelings show through, as in this passage where the Wart is feeling bored: It was a cold wet evening, such as may happen even toward the end of August, and the Wart did not know how to bear himself indoors….He was not forced to stay indoors because of the rain, by his female supervisors, as happens too frequently to the unhappy children of our generation, but the mere wetness and dreariness in the open discouraged him from going out.... ‘Ah, run along, my duck,’ said their Old Nurse. ‘I han’t got time to attend to thy mopseys now, what with all this sorbent washing.’27

The bitterness and distrust show through here; it is not by chance that the Wart seeks out the masculine company of his never-failing mentor, Merlyn. Even though the nurse is already disarmed by her malapropisms and comic attitudes from being taken very seriously, White makes sure that the Old Nurse cannot threaten the male supremacy and correspondingly idyllic atmosphere of the Castle Sauvage. maid marian Like the Old Nurse, Maid Marian escapes the formula that, seemingly without effort, arouses such strong antagonism in White. As the wife of Robin Wood, Maid Marian is cut adrift so far as social class is concerned. Her age remains indefinite. She excels at woodcraft and all the skills which small boys find most admirable. She seems to be an affectionate playmate for her outlaw husband, but Maid Marian is more of a woodsprite than a wanton. No particular note of warmth or of sexuality appears. When she voices her concern over letting the two boys act as rescuers for the prisoners of Morgan Le Fay, her remonstrations are voiced in the way that a well-brought-up young lady but lately a debutante might use,28 and it is the same tone in which one hears Guenever welcoming Lancelot in Knight:29 bright, familiar, very definitely upper-class, but utterly lacking

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any warmth. Robin without Marian would be almost as unthinkable as Lancelot without Guenever (although I am bound to admit that Sir Walter Scott made just such an omission in Ivanhoe), but Marian in Sword is an exemplar, not of authority or domination, but of skills: Marian showed them how to go sideways, one side after the other; how to stop at once when a bramble caught them, and take it patiently out; how to put their feet down sensitively and roll their weight to that leg as soon as they were certain that no twig was under the foot; how to distinguish at a glance the places which gave most hope of an easy passage; and how a kind of rhythm in their movements would help them in spite of obstacles…. The boys had felt disgruntled at first, at being put in a woman’s band. They would have preferred to have gone with Robin, and thought that being put under Marian was like being trusted to a governess. They soon found their mistake. She had objected to their coming, but, now that their coming was ordered, she accepted them as companions. It was not easy to be a companion of hers. In the first place, it was impossible to keep up with her unless she waited for them—for she could move on all fours or even wriggle like a snake almost as quickly as they could walk—and in the second place she was an accomplished soldier, which they were not. She was a true Weyve—except for her long hair, which most of the female outlaws of those days used to clip. One of the bits of advice which she gave them before talking had to be stopped was this: Aim high when you shoot in battle, rather than low. A low arrow strikes the ground, a high one may kill in the second rank. ‘If I am made to get married,’ thought the Wart, who had doubts on the subject, ‘I will marry a girl like this: a kind of golden vixen.’30

It is worth noting that the moment that the Wart’s thoughts go to marriage, White is quick to make his attention focus on Marian’s skills, not her sexual attraction: whistling, imitations, and archery. Maid Marian is a gay companion, boy-figured, a woodsprite: there is nothing in her nature about which White can feel threatened. morgan le fay As Maid Marian has long been a part of the legends of Robin Hood, so Morgan Le Fay has been long involved with the stories of King Arthur. White found her, like many other characters and situations in Malory, congenial to his talent and temperament to develop. Thinking of her as a wicked witch, White would have no trouble in coming to grips with her character. One is given (as with the Nurse’s cold-shouldering

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of the lonely, bored Wart) an additional nudge by White so that one is in absolutely no danger whatever of finding Morgan Le Fay attractive. Malory first describes Morgan Le Fay when she comes to court with Arthur’s mother, Igraine: ‘So in all haste the quene was sente for, [and she came] and she brought with hir Morgan le Fay, hir doughter, that was a fayre lady as ony myght be.’31 White’s description runs as follows: She was a fat, dowdy, middle-aged woman with black hair and a slight moustache, but she was made of human flesh…Perhaps, when she was outside this very strange castle, or when she was not doing that kind of magic to tempt the appetite, she was able to assume more beautiful forms.32

The observation here is not that Morgan Le Fay was a shape-shifter, this characteristic of hers well-attested to in other places, but rather that White chose to have her appearance made in this fashion. It was not enough that she be an enchantress; she must be loathly as well. In the original version of Sword, Morgan Le Fay is portrayed as a kind of Veronica Lake in a film-star movie palace. In picturing her as old in TOAFK, White had precedent. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, she is described as ‘that ancient lady.’33 lyo-lyok Only when one meets Lyo-lyok, the Wart’s female guide when he is changed by Merlyn into a grey goose, does one feel that one has encountered for the first time in Sword a small restful center to the maelstrom of frustrations and despairs that swept about White when he tried to write about women. It is somehow fitting that the most purely human, dignified, warm-hearted of the sex be cast by White as a fowl—writing about another species entirely, White could attain the objectivity toward women that is lacking elsewhere in the book. And yet this warmth and tenderness are not so much a matter of what White says as of a relaxation implicit in his tone. Lyo-lyok teaches him the ritual of sentry-duty, and is repelled when the Wart speaks glowingly of war: She relented with an effort to be good-natured. She wanted to be broadminded if she could, for she was rather a blue-stocking.... ‘But don’t they fight each other for the pasture?’

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‘Dear me, you are a silly,’ she said. ‘There are no boundaries among the geese.’34

Later, the Wart ‘grew to be fond of Lyo-lyok, in spite of her being a girl,’35 and this feeling of fondness grows as ‘she taught him what she knew with gentle kindness, and the more he learned, the more he came to love her brave, noble, quiet and intelligent relations.’36 Education is the bond between Lyo-lyok and Wart; her attributes are perhaps those of a well-loved and well-remembered school-mistress. This is one of the only times in TOAFK that the notion of the female as the great pre-Judaic and pre-Christian repository of wisdom and power makes an appearance. The scenes with Lyo-Lyok, however, first appeared in The Book of Merlyn, where they occur to the aged King Arthur and possess a more romantic tone. While the innocence of the Wart’s experiences with Lyo-Lyok result from significant revisions and cuts, the warmth and tenderness appear in both versions. One of the longest passages in Merlyn that White cuts follows Arthur’s crossing of the North Sea; he devotes an entire chapter37 to Arthur’s sojourn into the Siberian bogland. It contains poignant detail about Arthur’s unhappiness over the Guenever–Lancelot tangle and his tenderness toward Lyo-lyok. Arthur, engrossed with Lyo-lyok, reflects upon the grief he has suffered in the world of men, and wishes he could live among the geese: To settle down with Lyo-lyok, for instance: it seemed to him that a weary spirit might do worse. He began comparing her wistfully with the women he had known, not always to her disadvantage. She was healthier than they were, nor had she ever had the megrims or the vapours or the hysterics. She was as healthy as himself, as strong, as able on the wing. There was nothing that he could do, which she could not do: so that their community of interests would be exact. She was docile, prudent, faithful, conversable. She was a great deal cleaner than most women, because she spent one half of the day in preening herself and the other half in water, nor were her features disfigured by a single smear of paint. Once she had been married, she would accept no further lovers. She was more beautiful than the average woman, because she possessed a natural shape instead of an artificial one. She was graceful and did not waddle, for all the wild geese do their walking easily, and he had learned to think her plumage handsome. She would be a loving mother.

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t.h. white’s troubled heart He found in his old heart a warm feeling for Lyo-lyok, even if there was little passion. He admired her sturdy legs, with the knob at the top, and her neat bill. It had serrations like teeth, and a large tongue which seemed to fill it. He liked her for not being in a hurry.38

Lyo-lyok is entranced with the ritual of nestbuilding and White’s enormous powers of natural description are brought to bear in the visualization of her concern. Arthur decides to propose to her but he is snatched away, cruelly, and returned to his responsibilities. The break back to the reality of the Combination Room is shattering: He told her of his sorrows, of his unworthy nature, and of his admiration. He told her how, by joining her, he hoped to escape from Merlyn and the world. Lyo-lyok, as usual, did not seem to be surprised. She too lowered her neck and swam towards him. He was very happy when he saw the douceness of her eyes. But a dark hand came to fetch him, as you may have guessed. He found himself swept backwards, not on pinion, not migrating, but dragged down into the filthy funnel of magic. He snatched one floating feather as he vanished, and Lyo-lyok was before his face no more.39

The effect on TOAFK of the omission of Chapter 15 is to cut out a long narrative section about Lyo-lyok’s nest-building, as well as Arthur’s growing love for her. The heart-wrenchingly poignant involvement of the aged King Arthur with Lyo-lyok would be misplaced were the chapter to be transplanted wholesale into the earlier book, even though there is no question that the geese who mate for life and do not fight are more White’s ideal of woman than Guenever, the betrayer. The world of the geese is no more the mature human world than the world of Sword, the pages of which are filled with animals both wild and tame, magic, and no ‘round’ women at all. And if the young Wart were to undergo the same intensity of response to Lyo-lyok as the aged Arthur (granted it is an almost infantile idealism) it is possible that, with that memory, he would later in Queen have found it possible to repel Morgause’s advances, or at least resisted her attempts to seduce him. Having been once exposed to the real thing, the loving Lyo-lyok, Wart might be proof against falling for the false, the seductress Morgause. More deleted material is concerned with Arthur’s education by Lyo-lyok in the monogamous ways of the White-Fronted geese. (The

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king asks questions about ‘nationalism, about state-control, individual liberty, property and so forth; the things whose importance had been mentioned in the Combination Room, or which he had noticed in the ant-hill.’40) Contained in the material to be omitted from the goose episode in Sword is this passage: A married couple would repair to the same nest, year by year, although they might have travelled many thousand miles between. The nest was private, and so was family life. Geese, [Lyo-lyok] explained, were not promiscuous in their love affairs, except in adolescence; which, she believed, was as it should be. When they were married, they were married for their lives.41

Although this lesson about the sanctity of the marriage state is lacking in the goose episode in TOAFK, the sentiments it expressed (always, it is to be noted, in terms of animals) were never far from White’s mind. In the letter dated November 1955, in which he expresses his dislike of David Garnett’s novel Aspects of Love, White makes the statement that, I believe human beings ought to be monogamous, like those glorious creatures, ravens, swans, eagles, etc.—that if they consciously take a solemn vow in public they should stick to it—or not take it—and that women ought not to behave like headstrong babies.42

In a letter dated two months later (but posted with the first), White revealed the reason for his obduracy about marriage: My childhood was spent with Indian Civil Servants who had a tremendous sense of duty and fidelity, and it was also poisoned by my mother divorcing my father with every circumstance of squalor and ferocity. The result is that my reaction to your heroine is that she was simply a willful (wilfull?), selfish, promiscuous, empty-headed bitch. No, not bitch. Cow. Bitches are faithful creatures like Killie & Brownie.43

The argument that this lesson about marriage is not really germane to the Wart’s education as it is to Arthur’s—for Arthur, after all, is married to an unfaithful woman—is not valid, for the incorporation of the marriage lesson into the Sword episode could reasonably be expected to provide a kind of ironic foreshadowing of events to come in the Wart’s life. It appears as if White was at pains in the revised goose episode to delete almost every sexual reference. Nevertheless, Lyo-lyok must—

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perhaps only by comparison with the other females in the book—be judged as the one woman most sympathetically treated. elaine The final and latest appearing minor female character in TOAFK is Elaine, who does not arrive on the scene until The Ill-Made Knight. Like Lyo-lyok, Elaine finds sympathy from White, who lavished care on his envisionment of her character. Leaving aside for the moment a discussion of the considerations which made White ‘run together’ the two Elaines, one still sees that he had a lively appreciation of her worth. In Knight, Sir Ector and Sir Percival have been sent out by Queen Guenever to search for Lancelot, and they find him at Castle Corbin. He hears the old names, and a wave of homesickness comes over him. Elaine must know that she is to lose him once more. But even though her heart is breaking, she tries hard to welcome the knights, emissaries of her rival, for his sake: ‘Then came forthe dame Elayne. And she made them grete chere as myghte be made.’44 Opposite this passage in his Malory, White has written: ‘How terrific she must have been!’ There were, of course, no fewer than three Elaines concerned in Lancelot’s story: Elaine, his mother; Elaine, the daughter of King Pellas, by whom he had Galahad; and Elaine Le Blanke, Fayre Maydyn of Astolat, daughter of Barnard. White was aware of the three Elaines concerned with Lancelot, and this awareness is shown by his marginal comments in his copy of Jessie L. Weston’s The Legend of Sir Lancelot de Lac;45 in his copy of the Strachey Malory; and by his journal entry of 8 July 1939. One cannot, of course, say definitely that he had made his notations in the two books prior to writing Knight (although it would appear probable), but the journal entry is conclusive proof to the contrary of Redmond’s statement that ‘there is no evidence to suggest that [White] knew he was combining characters.’46 Opposite the part of the text that reads, ‘revealing Lanzelot’s name and parentage (his mother, Clarine, was sister to Arthur…),’ White has noted: ‘This accounts for one of the supernumerary Elaines in Malory. 1. Arthur’s sister, 2. Ban’s wife and mother of Lancelot, 3. Lancelot’s mistress and mother of their son Galahad, 4. the maid of Astolat.’ In his copy of the Strachey Malory, White has made two pertinent notations. The first of these occurs in Book XVII, 16: ‘And there the kynge tolde

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hym tydynges how his fayre doughter was dede.’47 White’s comment: ‘Statement that Elaine, Galahad’s mother, is dead. But I half mean to keep her alive and run her into Elaine 2.’ The second marginal comment showing White’s intentions to combine the two Elaines occurs after the crying of Arthur’s tournament at Winchester,48 when the Queen excuses herself from attending: Gwen, either not knowing her own mind, or else to show her power, first pleads the curse so that she can stay behind with Lance, then sends him after Arthur after all. Make this the occasion for Lance, thus worked upon, to revisit the original Elaine. Dont have two Elaines. Lancelot is forced into this course of action. If he turns up on Arthur’s side and says, ‘I found I could come after all,’ there will be scandal. So he has to pretend that he kept away on purpose to be able to come secretly on the opposing side. If I transplant Elaine Le Blank into Pelles’ Elaine, this will account for the fuss about going to the tournament—which would be at Corbin.49

It is evident from this marking that White, besides being concerned with ‘economy,’ was also at pains to provide motivation as well. As if these two marginal notations were not enough to illustrate White’s knowledge of the problem of the two Elaines, and his desire to combine them, his journal entry for 8 July 1939 clearly states his course of action: I have run Mallory’s two Elaines into one. Both alterations [making Agravaine Morgause’s murderer, and not Gaheris, as in Malory] were made in the interests of economy. I wanted to limit the number of villains, and, as Lancelot already had a mother called Elaine, I felt it was profuse to give him two mistresses of the same name.

White’s inclination, it must be noted, when he is faced with two Elaines, is to cut one out. But a combined Elaine makes excellent artistic sense: Guenever’s opposition is kept in steady focus; it adds strength to Elaine’s own character, and, through this, to the dimension of her opponent, Guenever; it makes Elaine’s death much more touching and affective. Left in, the second Elaine could only serve to detract from the importance of the Lancelot-Guenever affair. It is tempting only momentarily to suppose that White undertook this ‘running-together’ because he was still reluctant ‘to draw the shape of women.’

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Later, when Guenever complains to Sir Bors about Lancelot, White wrote: By now, Guenever is little better than a madwoman. If I run the two Elaines together, this will be her second and last stretch of time together with him. When she gets him, he is either mad or ill. The poor woman only has the leavings of him.50

It need hardly be pointed out that White shows sympathy for Elaine. At the point in Malory when Lancelot promises the second Elaine a thousand pounds yearly,51 White comments, ‘Lance offers blood-money to his conscience.’ At least in theory, the novelist who sets himself the task of writing about Elaine has two basic choices to make: he can either make her a stunner, or a frump. He can think of her as a proud and scheming beauty who compromises Lancelot simply in order to have his child. Or he can think of her as a rather forlorn figure, predestined for only the one love, and without much experience or knowledge of the world. The advantages and disadvantages of each choice, still speaking theoretically, are as follows. If Elaine is portrayed as a raving beauty, Guenever’s worth should be enhanced, since Lancelot still prefers Guenever to Elaine, and if Elaine is a beauty, then Guenever must be much more so. On the other hand, if Elaine is a beauty, then Guenever’s tantrums may just disaffect the reader, who will wonder why it is that Lancelot puts up with the Queen when there’s the lovely Elaine waiting in the wings. It seems to me that it takes a very polished, very clever writer to follow this course of action and not have Guenever suffer from the comparison. On the other hand, if Elaine is pictured as a frump, naive and pitiful, it really doesn’t say much for Lancelot that he is deluded by her. Nor does it say much for Guenever if she triumphs over a frump. Make Elaine dowdy and it diminishes both Lancelot and Guenever. The advantage, of course, of depicting Elaine in this way is that the motivation makes good sense; if Elaine were really stunning, need she have resorted to such ruses to ensnare Lancelot? In the event, White chose the second course, but with modifications which contribute to Elaine’s character and keep the reader’s sympathies

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with all three. In the same lengthy journal entry in which he discussed how he should portray Lancelot and Guenever, White discussed Elaine as well: Elaine never developed the adult feelings of the average woman: jealousy, possessiveness, self-reference. She remained a poor little thing at the mercy of her fate, like a child sent to bed by the governess when it was bedtime and taken out of bed by the governess when it was time to get up. She could make little effort to control Lancelot’s fate. She managed to get a child by him, but never offered to direct or force him afterwards. She just offered him her love. She did not—was not in a position to— demand anything in return. A girl and a beggar. A pathetic figure. She had nothing to offer him except love. He must have found her boring as a companion, but felt the flattered protective affection which men have for shooting dogs.52

There are three striking points about this appraisal of Elaine’s character, points which shed some considerable light on the way White looked at women, the way he thought of them, and the way in which his own feelings were sublimated into the feelings of Lancelot. First, it is worthy of attention that White’s initial premise about women’s feelings was largely negative. He says about Elaine, that she ‘never developed the adult feelings of the average woman: jealousy, possessiveness, self-reference.’ If these are the average feelings which he imputes to womankind in general, it is a commentary on the way White looked at women. Second, when he analogizes Elaine in this passage, it is by way of likening her to a child, a beggar, and a gun-dog. Of these, the most revealing simile is the last. Dogs, of course, played an extraordinarily important part in White’s own life. Many of what one might consider to be the normal human feelings of an adult man were, in White, sublimated to the love that he felt for Brownie and Killie. It is somehow telling that, when he wrote of Elaine, he thought of her in terms of an animal—in this case, a friend to man, a gun-dog. This is the same kind of anthropomorphic leap that he performs when he speaks of Guenever as a ‘tigress.’ The differences are illuminating. Third, one can see in this passage just such an emergence of the trait referred to by David Garnett in his introduction, whose words bear repeating here:

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t.h. white’s troubled heart Tim explained that the sadist cannot be happy unless he has proved the love felt for him by acts of cruelty, which naturally are misinterpreted by normal human beings. It had been Tim’s fate to destroy every passionate love he had inspired. He had found himself always in the dilemma of either being sincere and cruel, or false and unnatural.

Lancelot, so much the apologia for White himself, would never be considered by his creator as false and unnatural, so the only course of action which recommended itself was to make him sincere and cruel. It is a measure of White’s genius that he could so depict Lancelot, and yet not repel us. And as for Elaine: she would be the gun-dog, whom Lancelot found ‘boring as a companion, but felt a flattered protective affection for.’ C. WHITE’S ATTITUDE TOWARD WOMEN

A fat and dowdy Elaine is just another demonstration of White’s mainly negative attitudes toward women and sexuality, attitudes clearly discernible in the female characters which he has invented for Sword (the governess, Lyo-lyok), in those already established in the Arthurian matter of literature in general (Morgan Le Fay, Maid Marian), and in those female characters contained in Malory and other sources that he has seen fit to suppress (Sir Ector’s wife downgraded to the comic figure of the Old Nurse) or omit entirely (Arthur’s mother, Igraine; the hostess at the inn). In addition to these remarkable inventions, adaptations, and omissions and the cumulative effect that they have on the atmosphere of the book, there are also other hints and suggestions, less noticeable perhaps, but no less striking taken in their totality in creating a kind of moral attitude toward women in general and women of responsibility and power in particular. No sooner does Merlyn announce to the Wart that it is about time to commence their lessons than the Wart’s heart sinks ‘and he thought with dread of Summulae Logicales and the filthy astrolabe.’53 Education at women’s hands is thus meant to be associated with capricious punishment at the whim of an unstable teacher. A few pages later, during the episode when Merlyn—who clearly has no intention of emulating the pedagogy of the governess—changes Wart into a perch and himself into a wise old tench, and they are swimming in the moat of the Castle

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Sauvage, a young roach approaches Merlyn and entreats him to come and examine his mother, who is ill. Merlyn and Wart swim after the roach and, on the way, Merlyn speaks to Wart: ‘“Neurotic, these roach,” whispered Merlyn, behind his fin. “It is probably a case of nervous hysteria, a matter for the psychologist rather than the physician.”’54 Again, the reader is given the suggestion that was first implanted with the appearance of the governess of the first page of Sword: women, particularly those in positions of authority, and especially mothers, are not to be trusted—they are devious and unstable. In a later scene when the Wart is being changed into a merlin to spend the night in the mews, Merlyn warns him, ‘Don’t go within reach of the falcon unless she invites you to.’55 When, by mistake, Merlyn changes himself into a condor, he exclaims: ‘It is this by-our-lady spring cleaning....Once you let a woman into your study for half an hour, you do not know where to lay your hands on the right spell, not if it was ever so.’56

Both of these remarks of Merlyn, made upon the impressionable Wart, would seem to add to the information already stored there: women are dangerous, predatory, and possibly stupid and unthinking as well. This attitude is further enhanced after the Wart is placed in the mews. Merlyn has already warned the Wart about the falcon, but he adds, ‘for all sake’s sake don’t interrupt the senior merlins or the falcon. She is the honorary colonel of the regiment.’57 The peregrine falcon herself is described as speaking ‘in a high nasal voice which came from her aristocratic nose.’58 She is autocratic (‘“Colonel,” said the peregrine coldly, “not before the younger officers.”’59). She is also a snob (‘“There are the Yorkshire merlins...and the Welsh Merlins, and the McMerlins of the North.” ’60) given to condescension (a merlin tells Wart that ‘her ladyship spoke to [another merlin] from her full social station once, cavalry to infantry, you know, and that he just closed his eyes and got the vertigo. He has never been the same since.’61). While there is an undercurrent of real hatred under some of these descriptions, there is also a counterbalance, a heavy emphasis placed upon innocence. After Wart has been apprised of the plan to introduce Kay and him into the Castle Chariot, he agrees:

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t.h. white’s troubled heart ‘Then we must go there.’ ... ‘You are right about going there,’ [Robin Hood] said, ‘but I ought to tell you the unpleasant part. Nobody can get into the Castle Chariot, except a boy or girl.’ ‘Do you mean you can’t get in?’ ‘You could get in.’ ‘I suppose,’ explained the Wart, when he had thought this over, ‘it is like the thing about unicorns.’ ‘Right. A unicorn is a magic animal, and only a maiden can catch it. Fairies are magic too, and only innocent people can enter their castles.’62

At the hurricane’s eye, there is the still small space of calm: innocence is to be respected; few have it. Maidens and children. Even Galahad, later, is made out to be a religion-mad prig. At the end of Chapter 16, which concerns the Christmas boar hunt with William Twyti, King Pellinore echoes the misgivings voiced by Merlyn about letting a woman into one’s life. Pellinore has found Glatisant in a piteous state. He is moved deeply by the plight of the Questing Beast and enlists the aid of Twyti and Robin Wood (‘“Stop leaning on your bow with that look of negligent woodcraft”’63) to help him carry the beast back to the Castle Sauvage. There is no mention of marriage in Sword as touching as Pellinore’s lament: It’s what comes of not leading a regular life. Before, it was all right. We got up at the same time, and quested for regular hours, and went to bed at half past ten. Now look at it. It has gone to pieces altogether.64

There is an unwillingness on White’s part to come to grips in Sword with a well-born lady of gentle instincts; he is uncomfortable with the notion of an attractive, kindly woman who is well bred. Except for mentions of his friends’ wives (Ray Garnett, for example), White until late in his life rarely speaks with affection at any length of a woman with background similar to his own. The barmaid in the Kipling letter65 whom he spoke of as having pinched, his landlady in Ireland with whom he recited the catechism, the girl in Yorkshire, and the debutante on Alderney with whom he carried on a self-conscious flirtation—with

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these women, White slid past any real involvement just as easily as Arthur slips by Morgause; with them it was clearly impossible for White to have carried on an extended relationship of any deep sort, and from this fact White must have taken solace in his sadist’s heart even as he pinched and flirted and prayed.

From the Journals of T.H. White Printed by kind permission of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Chapter Five Morgause

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he story of Morgause is also the story of White’s struggles with Queen. Her depiction cost White a great deal of effort and worry as he revised numerous times the book in which she first appears. His correspondence with Garnett and others as well as his journal entries attest to the difficulty under which he labored as he attempted to exorcise the presence of his mother in the witch. She dominates Queen, the book that Witch became, and so I shall first examine the history of this book and her presence in it before considering her return in the final book of TOAFK, Candle. The original version of Queen, Witch, was begun apparently in late 1938. Fishing in Ireland in February 1939 with his friend David Garnett, White decided to stay on after Garnett left: The Boyne must be full of [fish], since it had yielded one in the first quarter of an hour; and in the intervals of fishing he would finish The Witch in the Wood. He supposed it would be a matter of a fortnight or so.1

On 5 May 1939, in a letter to Sir Sydney Cockerell, White mentioned that he had finished the manuscript, and he took it across to England around 20 May 1939. The indications are therefore that the last part of Witch and whatever reviewing and rewriting White felt necessary were accomplished in Ireland, where White lived from February 1939 to September 1945, during a time when a good bit of his energies might be expected to be used up in outdoor pursuits. The first hint that White felt uneasy about his production came in a letter to Garnett dated 29 May 1939: ‘I have finished my book called The Witch in the Wood and left it to be typed in England. It may not be any good.’2 White’s reservations concerning Witch were not misplaced: Collins wrote to say that the manuscript of Witch did not meet their standards for publication. Warner, noting that White at about this time lost two of

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his hawks because he did not take enough time with their early training, quotes from one of White’s diaries and makes the point that something of the same kind had occurred with Witch: ‘Falconry is like treason—it is all plotting.’ Much the same can be said about authorship. In both, the plotting must include plotting against oneself. The birds were lost because White did not plot against his besetting hurry. They were, however, totally lost; nothing more need be done about them. By a similar failure to plot against himself and he let his mother get into The Witch in the Wood.3

On 28 June 1939 White wrote to his long-time friend L.J. Potts, outlining his view not only of Witch, but of how it would fit in to the scheme of TOAFK: The Witch in the Wood is Book II of a projected 4 books about the doom of Arthur. Book III will give the Lancelot-Guenever tangle and book IV will bring the three tragic themes together for the final clash. The three tragic themes are the Cornwall feud, existing ever since Arthur’s father killed Gawaine’s grandfather; the Nemesis of Incest, which I have found frightfully difficult to introduce without gloom or nastiness; and the Guenever–Lancelot romance. You know, the real reason why Arthur came to a bad end was because he had slept with his sister. It is a perfectly Aristotelian tragedy and it was the offspring of this union who finally killed him. Morgause (the sister) is really more important in the doom than Guenever is, both through being associated with the Cornwall feud and through the incest theme (for her son Mordred finally brings the doom). I had to show her as a bad mother and the kind of person who would bear more of the incest onus than my hero. Error or Frailty.4

When it came to envisioning Queen Morgause, White was driven inevitably to writing about his mother:‘Whether Morgause is a farcical strumpet or a dark Celtic witch, Constance White inhabits her and invalidates the book by being hated as an actual person. The real incest theme of the story is the maternal rape on the child; it was this that cast White back into the nursery language of “nasty.” He was so incapable of facing it that the Malorean knot of doom is never tied: Arthur and Morgause glide past each other in a granny.’5 White keenly felt the difficulties as he worked on Witch. In a letter to Sir Sydney Cockerell, he laments:

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What a comfort to think that Tolstoy wrote War and Peace seven times. I bet he re-wrote the last chapters most of all, and that is why they are quite unreadable. The Witch in the Wood is nearly sending me mad.6

His revision of Witch was published by Collins in April 1940 when White was already working enthusiastically on Knight. White wrote in a letter to Garnett at the time that ‘Book 3 of my Arthur cycle is going to be a cracker. Book 2 was hopeless,’7 and it is a legitimate inference to suppose that no small part of this enthusiasm derived from the hope that at last Constance White was out of his system. She was not: ‘Pretty good in the end’ was the best that Potts could say for it. White had scamped the revision, because he wanted to get it out of the way. Seeing it in print, he knew it wouldn’t do, and began a second revision.8

By the end of April 1940 White was writing David Garnett asking for his help: The book has a few merits in parts, but there are many parts much too vulgarly farcical. I have read it through so often that I can no longer distinguish. I want to appeal to some man of decent feelings to bluepencil the shoddy passages for me—particularly the Evelyn Waugh, P.G. Wodehouse bits.9

For all his apparent eagerness to enlist assistance with the revision of Witch, the delicately worded ‘appeal to some man of decent feelings’ is as close as White can bring himself to mentioning the central problem of the book—the Constance White–Queen Morgause nightmare. Having approached the brink of self-revelation this closely, White, frightened, quickly draws back: If you will do this for me, I will cut out all the parts you object to, and substitute others, before the book is finally published in one volume with the rest of the tetralogy [the idea of a five-fold Once and Future King had not yet occurred to White]. The present publication is in the nature of artist’s proofs. You need not take much trouble, but only read it and make bluepencil marks as you go along.10

Here one feels that White is being disingenuous. He must have been aware of the deficiencies of Witch as a novel, deficiencies brought about principally by the ‘invalidating’ presence of Constance White, but he also must have known that Witch simply wasn’t able to stand on its own merits as a novel, especially next to Sword. Only as a contributory part of

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TOAFK does Witch reveal any real merit: it is too self-consciously gothic a work, its funny parts too deliberately show-pieces, and its sad and cruel parts by far too sad and cruel. For the sake of his own good name, White must have been eager for his friends to know that he shared with them their misgivings about Witch. He was too honest to do otherwise. With White’s self-consciously offhand comments about blue-pencilling, one feels that White is sensitive to the possibility that, in seeking help with revising Witch, he might be inviting comments as painful as they were likely to be perceptive. From June 1940 until November 1941, when White sent off the newly envisioned five-fold TOAFK 11 to Collins in London, he continued to worry about Witch. Barely three months later in a letter to Garnett dated 22 September 1940, White claims to ‘have completely rewritten’ Witch.12 Though he had by now begun to toy with the idea of a five-fold Arthur, his concern with Constance White, the ‘invalidating presence,’ seems to have continued unabated for, as a post-script to the letter mentioned above, White wrote: [My mother] is a Witch, so look out, if you go [to visit her]. Probably she is a poor old witch by now, and probably I ought to be ashamed of myself. I am. But I have tried to get on with her, and every year or two I try again. We communicate by letter. I am in one of my ashamed periods, and that is why I am trying to use you as a cat’s paw. But only if you are near, of course. She must be nearing seventy, and is alone. It is because she has chased away her husband, lover and son, by her own efforts. But this does not alter the fact that she is 70 and alone. And then there are the bombs.13

Whatever his reflections, whatever the personal anguish to him, White continued to act toward his mother with his usual sense of responsibility and filial duty. Yet Witch and Morgause’s character continued to claw at his already exacerbated sensibilities. In a long journal entry of 25 October 1940, White outlines where he has failed with her in Witch and posits a different possibility of handling her in Queen. It is interesting to note that, as he was to do later with Guenever, White likens his female characters to an animal—in this case a great cat, a black panther. White’s plan is revelatory of the drive that he had to do the best possible job with Morgause, for he had taken the criticism to heart, and in fact had already known what the verdict was to be:

morgause I shall have to re-write the Witch in the Wood, cutting out 75% of the horse-play and treating Morgause seriously, against a background of Celtic witchcraft. This will be the fourth draft of the wretched book. It is no good trying to patch: it will simply have to be re-written altogether. What sort of a person was she? 1. Her father had been killed and her mother married to his murderer, when she was at an impressionable age. 2. She was a Celt from Cornwall, and witchcraft was prevalent in her family. Her sister Morgan was the most famous witch in the Kingdom. She herself was not very good at the black art. Was she too lazy to study? Too impractical? Too practical? Her interests lay elsewhere. The Black Art was a science, therefore intellectual and inclined to be abstract. Her interests were concrete: exclusively sexual. But no doubt she had a background of pishreog [minor magic]. 3. She had five children. A hollow woman would hardly do this. Could Gawaine, Agravaine, Gaheris and Gareth have been step-children, Lot’s sons by a former wife? A pointer in this direction lies in their ‘G’ names. Mordred is the only one with an ‘M’ name, to pair with hers. (Note the strange fact that the opposition to Arthur and his Queen were all ‘M’ people. Mador, Meliagraunce, Mordred, Morgause, Morgan Le Fay. This seems too much of a coincidence, except for Merlin [sic].) But if these four were step-children, why did they love her so much? Perhaps they didn’t. Perhaps she made a favorite of Agravaine only, and he was the one who felt deeply enough about her to do her in. Or perhaps they all hated her all the time, and killed her in the end when she had made them hate her too much. There would be little difference between love and such strong hate. But if the four had been step-children who disliked her, why should Mordred have got on well with them, after they had killed her? For evidently Mordred loved her. In his way. Could Mordred have hated his four half-brothers? Could he have been tricking Agravaine and Gawaine to their destruction, combined with Arthur’s? If so, I shall have to re-write the whole epic, not only Book 2. There is still time to introduce this feeling with Book 4, and I rather fancy it. According to this reading, you would have to give the four G’s a charming mother who dies young. Then Morgause must marry Lot for his money, bear him no children, but make the G’s life a misery to them (as well as making Lot’s life a misery). She herself must finally vamp Arthur and bear her only son, Mordred, whom she must so educate that he hates his brother as well as Arthur. Then, in Mordred’s scene with Guenever in Book 4, let

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him confess that his love for the four G’s has only been dissimulation. He has always hated them as much as Arthur? Or he has always been indifferent towards them, or contemptuous. He has dissembled, in order to use them. This sounds a bit too Elizabethian. Perhaps you could make Mordred suddenly realize this for the first time, himself, during that scene with Guenever.* 4. To return to Morgause. Malory says she was a very beautiful woman. 5. She was an unchaste woman. At seventy she was seducing a boy of twenty (Lamorak). 6. She was killed by her own son (or step-son?) in a frightful manner. 7. But there must have been something about her, or she would not have captured Arthur. If I make her too unpleasant, it will put Arthur in the wrong. She must be just sufficiently unpleasant to be the guilty party as regards the birth of Mordred, and not so unpleasant as to make her union with a pleasant man unnatural. 8. She was possessive. Note that she picks her lovers among people much younger than herself. Was Pendragon younger than her mother? Could she have loved Pendragon? What exact emotional knot was it, that was tied when Uther slew her father and became her step-father? 9. List of people she might have been like: Clytemnestra Cleopatra (Shakespeare’s) That Matron at St. David’s, whatever her name was Aunt Lilian—very slightly My mother The Witch in Snow White A claw-padded, secret cat. Yes, and one who goes upon the tiles. Some Faustive [sic] or other out of Swinburne. A fanatical anti-Norman, a Countess Markewitz. Mrs. Bywaters—or Thompson Mme. Bovary? (Strange, but when one casts about in literature for full, convincing women, the Bovary is one of the few one can think of. There are far more convincing men in literature than women, especially in Shakespeare.)** 6. [sic] Morgause should haunt you. She should have all the frightful power and mystery of women. Yet she should be quite shallow, cruel, selfish. Her beauty must be stressed, to help in accounting for Arthur’s

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seduction. She must be an accomplished actress—but more through slyness and deceitfulness than imagination. One important thing is her Celtic blood. Let her be the worst west-of-Ireland type: the one with cunning bred in the bone. Let her be mealy-mouthed: butter would not melt in it. Yet also she must be full of blood and power. Let her show one character to one person and one to another. She must be lascivious to some knight or knights, indifferent to her children (or slyly cruel, if they are to be step-children), cunning to Lot, sweetness itself to Arthur, and, alone with herself, a perfect purr of dark energy. But I must be able to love or understand or sympathize with her: at least I must be able to write her from inside. This is why The Witch in the Wood is proving so frightfully difficult. I loathe the woman. You can’t write a book (unless you are Stendhal) whose central figure is loathsome. And personally I can’t read Le Rouge et le Noir. I tried to get round it by satirizing or mocking her, but this did not do it. I must read Madame Bovary again. 7. What animal did she resemble? Would it do to make her a panther, with all the noble qualities of that animal thrown in? A panther is beautiful and cruel. It seems to lack the western cunning, but is reasonably deceitful. A black panther. My God, how difficult it is to write about women. *It would also make it much easier to fit in the age groups, if Morgause were not the mother of the four Gs. If she is the mother of them, she has to be infinitely older than Arthur, and this leads to the extraordinary situation of her at 70 being killed in bed with Lamorak aged 19. But if she were not the mother of the four Gs, then she need not be made so old when she meets Arthur (who has to be about 20) and the whole thing becomes more probable. **One sidelight on the character of Morgause can be got from the sort of children she dropped. You could perhaps build up her character by adding all their characters together. Gawaine bad-tempered, amoral, clannish, fierce, with several decent instincts. Gaheris (my interpretation, not Malory’s) stupid. Agravaine brutal, bullying, cunning, envious. Gareth beautiful, a dear. Modred intelligent, crooked, bitter, ironic, pitiless.14

In a letter dated 4 June 1941, Garnett handsomely acknowledges receiving The Ill-Made Knight but, in answer to White’s request, goes on to compare Sword with Witch: Well—Sword in the Stone is like Wood Magic. It is poetry: it is for children & we are all children & happiest when anyone can make [us] believe we are. Sword in the Stone is genius in a dozen episodes & is a

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t.h. white’s troubled heart superlative Punch Christmas when it isn’t genius. The Witch in the Wood is something good—nearly the real thing. Often padding. The Illmade Knight is serious. It is one of those complicated things—a revelation—a sermon for a few—hidden under a camouflage. The bookjacket set me thinking who you are really like. Perhaps you won’t be pleased if I say the Kipling of your generation…The difference is that Kipling was VULGAR—perhaps only because of his date & that you have not that taint. Also Kipling was a beastly sort of cad, whereas you are a serious person.15

A few lines later, after expressing concern about White’s drinking (we gather that, after imbibing poteen, White had become ill), Garnett ventures the question, ‘I suppose your mother doesn’t want to let her house—or know of any empty houses near?’16 Garnett’s letter, with its damning-with-faint-praise assessment of Witch (‘nearly the real thing. Often padding.’), with its well-founded concern about White’s drinking, with its genuinely felt, by no means unfavorable comparison of White to Kipling, and with its afterthought reference to Constance White (surely it must have occurred to White, even as he took up residence in Ireland across the stormy Irish Sea from England, that witches cannot cross water) proved, predictably, to be irresistible to White. White responded almost by return post. Constance White drifts in and out of his reply like an insistent ghost. White no sooner begins speaking of Kipling and his admiration for him than his mind jumps to his mother. Reconciling himself to her destructive presence, White tries to answer Garnett’s query about a house and then, with obvious relief, resolutely starts to set out at length his plans for a five-fold Arthur. But his mind returns to Constance White and her ‘invalidating’ presence as Queen Morgause in Witch: God, if I thought I was like Kipling, I would hop round the room on my hands. I have written to my mother, asking if she knows of local cottages. She would be most unlikely to let her own. The place—which reeks of everything in Pook’s Hill (a local hill) and Rewards & Fairies—is one of the most beautiful valleys in Sussex—in the Weald—but I really cannot advise you to put yourself in my mother’s power by proximity. You wonder why straight & moral paths are difficult, tortuous and impossible

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for me. Go and see my mother. However, I have written to her. Every time I have to write to her even, it is like being mildly crucified.17

At this point, White begins speaking of his plans for the five-fold Arthur, but, his worry over Constance White’s continued domination of Witch having ripened to a concern during the months of writing and rewriting, his concern is now metastisizing into an obsession: Well, you have got to help me about The Witch in the Wood. Morgause is the villain of the piece. (I may mention that she is my mother.) This is why I have had such awful difficulty with her. I have already written that book four separate times, sometimes taking her seriously, sometimes trying to palm her off under a patter of farce. I shall have to write it again. ... Can you tell me anything about The Witch in the Wood? Anything. Not compliments, for God’s sake. Mordred, who finally broke the Table, was her son. Gawain, who helped to break it because he was stupid, cross, clannish but fundamentally decent, was her son. Agravaine, a swine, was her son. Gaheris, only stupid, was her son. Agravaine murdered her, because he found her in bed with Sir Lamorak at the age of 70. The clan also murdered Lamorak—and they had murdered his father Pellinore. She was a Celt from Cornwall, and her husband was a celt from Scotland. (In the serious re-writing I was thinking of doing an immense amount of stuff about the gaelic blood—the feral, subtle, treacherous Pict.) All her sisters were witches—a common trait in female gaels. Damn! Obviously I can’t explain in a single letter. God bless you, Bunny.18

Mothers—even mothers of seventy years of age like Morgause and Constance White in 1941—have the power to arouse deep and

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contradictory feelings. The letter is a cry of naked human need. The letters that followed declare White’s continued troubles. By August, however, White thought that he was free of the malignant influence of Witch and could set his mind to other things. Garnett’s next letter to him dated 7 September 1941 must have put paid to such a misconception: Richard has written some devastating notes about the Witch in the Wood, with which I am not in complete agreement. They do not spare an author’s feelings. The real thing was to change Morgause as you say you have. It is always a mistake when one feels an author is venting a personal grudge on a character. I felt that about you & Morgause.19

Not only had Garnett abandoned his previous tactfulness and spotlighted for fair the area of sensitivity, but his equal-among-equals assessment of his son Richard’s criticism possibly raised feelings of resentment. If so, White contained his annoyance admirably. The only clear indication that all was not well is in his apparent eagerness to forestall Richard’s criticisms before they had been voiced. White, in a letter dated 14 September 1941, took a bluff-and-manly tack. Using the advantage that he and he alone could determine what was fitting in the book, White again demonstrated his continuing sensitivity to Queen Morgause and her earthly inspiration. On the advice of both Richard and his father, however, White reinserted St. Toirdealbhach. White meant what he said when he wrote to the elder Garnett, ‘As an author I am level-headed about insults.’20 The impression one is left with after reading the correspondence between Garnett and White dealing with Witch is that White, for all of his obsession with Constance White and her ‘invalidating presence’ in the book, was a consummate craftsman of the highest integrity. The final typescript of the five books was sent to Collins on 7 November 1941 (including The Book of Merlyn), and ‘Collins was left to discover for himself that the three books already published [Sword, Witch, and Knight] had been considerably altered to bring them into conformity with “The Book of Merlyn.”’21 Not until 1958 were the four Arthur books (sans ‘The Book of Merlyn’ much of whose contents were to be inserted in Sword ) ‘going to be published as an omnibus in England and the U.S.A.’22 This would provide White with yet another chance to exorcise his demons, another ‘opportunity for a further revision, and

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for a change of title’ (The Queen of Air and Darkness had already been substituted for The Witch in the Wood ).23 Morgause is a petulant, beautiful, cruel, stupid woman; sensual, insensitive, selfish to her core. Out of boredom and idleness, she makes her sons fall in love with her. She seduces her half-brother Arthur, using witchcraft, and Mordred, her fifth son, will be his mother’s most notable success at psychological maiming. Appropriate to such a woman, the image of the carrion crow, which begins Queen (‘the weather-cock was a carrion crow, with an arrow in its beak to point to the wind’24) and short of a few pages only, ends it, laces the action recounted in Queen to what has already taken place in Sword, providing an ironic commentary on Morgause’s seduction of Arthur. When one’s attention is first directed to the carrion crow weathercock, one’s thoughts immediately return to Sword, and its two mentions of carrion crows. The first and more significant of these occurs when Wart and Kay, coming home from hunting rabbits, pause to unloose their arrows at the sky: A gore-crow came flapping wearily before the approaching night. It came, it did not waver, it took the arrow. It flew away, heavy and hoisting, with the arrow in its beak. Kay was frightened by this, but the Wart was furious. He had loved his arrow’s movement, its burning ambition in the sunlight, and, besides, it was his best one. It was the only one which was perfectly balanced, sharp, tight-feathered, clean-nocked, and neither warped nor scraped. ‘It was a witch,’ said Kay.25

It is not until the first line of Queen, however, that the reader really begins to sense the malevolence of the crow image and its connection to Morgause, and not until almost the end of the book, when the reader sees the last view of the weathercock as Morgause runs the grisly spancel through her fingers, that the reader fully appreciates that the arrow in its beak (the Wart’s ‘best one,’ ‘perfectly balanced’) is a presage of what Morgause herself will, by the aid of magic, steal from the young King Arthur:

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Outside the window the thin moon stood upright in a deep sky, like the paring of a fingernail for magic, and against the sky the weather vane of the carrion crow with arrow in mouth pointed its arrow to the south.26

The arrow points toward the south; Arthur is in the south. Morgause will enchant him. The implication here is that she has already by witchcraft stolen his best arrow, even as she will with the aid of the spancel steal from him his seed.27 The carrion crow image is just one device that White uses to underscore the psychological conflict between Morgause and Arthur, a conflict ultimately to be resolved by a woman’s treachery. That Arthur is all-unwitting of either Morgause or her plans does not seem to count for much. Innocence, indeed, is not enough. The Orkney children are injured by Morgause far sooner than Arthur. They are the thin, strange children of Queen Morgause and King Lot, brought up in the distant Orkneys by their mother in an atmosphere of primitive terror and superstition. White draws the children well. It is hard not to feel sorry for them in spite of scenes in which they demonstrate their insensitivity and brutality, for they adored [their mother] dumbly and uncritically, because her character was stronger than theirs…It was more as if she had brought them up—perhaps through indifference or through laziness or even through some kind of possessive cruelty—with an imperfect sense of right and wrong. It was as if they could never know when they were being good or when they were being bad.28

With the Orkneys, family affection and mother-love are absent, education and moral instruction are lacking, the opportunity for exchanging love is limited or denied; it is easy to see that their inevitable tendency is to decline into savagery. The great determining factor in precipitating this decline into amorality—one which has no counterpart in Arthur’s story since it is without women in Sword—is the malign presence of Queen Morgause. Through her idleness and vice and utter selfishness and the perversity she demonstrates in making her children fall in love with her, she hastens the process of brutalization. The Wart’s life in Sir Ector’s bachelor household looks positively idyllic in comparison to the strange and cruel life in Morgause’s pele tower and midden heap.

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It is the undercurrent of cruelty that is perhaps Queen’s most notably pervasive characteristic. In Queen, White shows a preoccupation with physical suffering and is obsessed particularly by the cruelty shown to poor dumb animals who, in their brutal stupidity, are incapable of guilt. This preoccupation with animals becomes analogized in an inexpressibly sad transfer to the cruelty shown to small unloved children who, themselves innocent, are chastised unmercifully by the idle, capricious mother whom they continue to adore. From the first chapter of Queen, when Morgause boils the black cat alive, one is aware that White’s enthusiasm in describing the hideous scene exceeds what one might otherwise expect it to require. There is an unfeigned enthusiasm in the depiction of the wretched pet, a voluptuary’s delight in the clinical recounting of the helpless creature’s agony. White’s refined appreciation of cruelty is sadly apparent in this scene, as it is in the donkey episode, the unicorn hunt, and Arthur’s seduction by means of the grisly spancel, as well as all the other touches of cruelty that fill Queen’s pages. White, while he was living in Ireland and writing Queen was exposed to the sight of pain, and his journals detail his sight of it: ‘Calves aged as much as eighteen months are dishorned with a saw: they stand in the field, bloody and bedimmed.’ As Warner comments, ‘White had a sadist’s acute intelligence for pain.’29 A spell ‘to charm eligible gentlemen’ is outlined in White’s journal entry for 8 February 1940. The description of this piseog is the same as the description of the ‘spancel’ in Queen and was apparently practiced on Inniskea.30 When not treating them cruelly, Morgause uses animals to manipulate others. The substantial identification of White’s view of Constance White with Queen Morgause becomes evident when one notices the attention that White pays to Morgause’s dogs. In an autobiographical journal entry for 15 June 1942 White notes: My mother has a mode of attrition which I can only call Attritio Obliqua. For instance, she keeps masses of disgusting little dogs, and, if I for instance shew reluctance to run some errand for her, she will snatch up a dog and coo in its ear: ‘Darling little Oodlums. Oo wouldn’t refuse to do it for your mother, would oo?’ As the result of this kind of thing, my father shot her dogs. There was a good deal of shooting in those days.31

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This recollection of Constance White had received amplification in an earlier (and discarded) version of the same scene in Witch: These dogs, or familiars, were one of the Queen’s most potent weapons. They were called Oodlums, Doveykins, Sweetie-Peetie, Ucky-Ducky and Ickle-Petty-Wetty. They were all male dogs, in spite of their names, and the way Queen Morgause made use of them was as follows. She might have said, for instance, to King Lot: ‘Oh, Lot, get up at once and fetch me my knitting, will you?’ Then, if her husband replied that she had better fetch her knitting herself, she would snatch up Oodlums or Ickle-PettyWetty or whichever it was, and, embracing and almost suffocating the unfortunate creature with every sign of doting affection, she would coo reproachfully: ‘Darling Oodlums, Oo would fetch or ickle wifie’s knitting for her if she asked oo, wouldn’t oo?’ When not engaged in using her familiars for such purposes of attrition, Queen Morgause treated them with the utmost indifference, if not with cruelty.32

Though Morgause looms largest in Queen, her presence continues to haunt White in Candle. One is curiously aware that behind Mordred’s twisted shape there looms the shadow of his dead mother, killed at the age of seventy by her son Agravaine, who with Mordred discovered her in bed with her lover, Sir Lamorak. The effect of the upbringing, and the murder, is discussed by White in his rehearsal of the tragedy given in Chapter 1 of Candle. Mordred, the reader is told, had been brought up alone with his mother, in the barbarous remoteness of the outer Isles. He had been brought up alone with Morgause, because he was so much younger than the rest of the family. The others had already flown to the King’s court—forced there by ambition because it was the greatest court in the world, or else to escape their mother. Mordred had been left to be dominated by her, with her ancestral grudge against the King and her personal spite. For, although she had contrived to seduce young Arthur in his nonage, he had escaped her—to settle down with Guenever as his wife. Morgause, brooding in the North with the one child who remained to her, had concentrated her maternal powers on the crooked boy. She had loved and forgotten him by turns, an insatiable carnivore who lived on the affections of her dogs, her children and her lovers. Eventually one of the other sons had cut her head off in a storm of jealousy, on discovering her in bed at the age of seventy with a young man called Sir Lamorak. Mordred—confused between the loves and hatreds of his frightful home—had at the time been a party to her assassination.33

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In this passage, White demonstrates his continued preoccupation with Morgause and the paramount importance that he assigns to her position in the tragedy.34 The virulence of White’s portrayal of Morgause in Queen flows undiluted in Candle’s frequent mentions of her. In Chapter 3, Arthur, courteous as always, proceeds to tell Lancelot and Guenever the story of how he, a young man, was seduced by Morgause, not knowing that she was his own half-sister. He was in love with her. And the child who came from this union was Mordred: Gawaine and the rest are Arthur’s nephews, but Mordred is Arthur’s own son. Lancelot tries to comfort the King; Arthur did not know Morgause was his halfsister he tells the King, and, besides, ‘Morgause—’ King Arthur gently interrupts to ask Lancelot to speak no more of Morgause, for she ‘has paid for her share by having her head cut off, so we must leave her to rest in peace.’35 And that is not the worst part. The King goes on to tell Guenever and Lancelot about his efforts to kill Mordred by sending out to sea in a large boat all the children born at a certain time. Most of the children were killed, but Mordred was spared: ‘God saved Mordred, and sent him back to shame me afterwards.’36 Lancelot, thinking of his own well-spring of unspecified blame, is furious: ‘Arthur,’ he exclaimed, ‘you have nothing to be ashamed of. What you did was done to you, when you were too young to know better. If I could lay my hands on the brutes who frighten children with stories about sin, I would break their necks. What good does it do? Think of all that suffering, and for nothing!’37

In Chapter 11, as Guenever and her maid-in-waiting, Agnes, talk about Lancelot and Arthur, and admit their fears of Mordred, their conversation drifts inevitably to Morgause. Guenever tells Agnes: ‘[Queen Morgause] must have been a strange person. It is common knowledge, now that Mordred is made the Lord Protector, so it doesn’t matter talking about it. But she must have been a powerful woman to have caught our King when she had four big boys of her own. Why, she caught Sir Lamorak when she was a grandmother. She must have had a terrible effect on her sons, if one of them could have felt so fiercely about her that he killed her. She was nearly seventy. I expect she ate Mordred, Agnes, like a spider.’38

White’s continued and corrosive statements about Morgause have the effect of making the reader blame Mordred rather less for the way

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things are turning out, and Morgause rather more. After Mordred sits down with the pug dog in his lap and talks with Guenever, White makes these comments: It is the mother’s not the lover’s lust that rots the mind. It is that which condemns the tragic character to his walking death. It is Jocasta, not Juliet, who dwells in the inner chamber. It is Gertrude, not the silly Ophelia, who sends Hamlet to his madness. The heart of tragedy does not lie in stealing or taking away. Any feather-pated girl can steal a heart. It lies in giving, in putting on, in adding, in smothering without the pillows. Desdemona robbed of life or honour is nothing to a Mordred, robbed of himself—his soul stolen, overlaid, wizened, while the mother-character lives in triumph, superfluously and with stifling love endowed on him, seemingly innocent of ill-intention. Mordred was the only son of Orkney who never married. He, while his brothers fled to England, was the one who stayed alone with her for twenty years—her living larder. Now that she was dead, he had become her grave. She existed in him like the vampire.39

In the next chapter, Chapter 12, when Arthur speaks up to Gawaine in Mordred’s defense, Morgause is mentioned once more: ‘Gwen used to say that all his warmth was for his mother.’ ‘He was fond of our mother.’ ‘Perhaps he was in love with her.’ ‘That would account for why he was jealous of ye.’ Gawaine was surprised at this discovery, which had struck him for the first time. ‘Perhaps that was why he allowed Sir Agravaine to kill her, when she had that affair with Lamorak...Poor boy, he has been ill-treated by the world.’40

There is little question that as White was at immense pains to cut out his personal feelings from Queen, he found it attractive, convenient, and artistically defensible to attribute much of Mordred’s infamy to his mother. Surely, in the passage quoted above, in the sentence that reads ‘she had loved and forgotten him by turns, an insatiable carnivore who lived on the affections of her dogs, her children and her lovers,’41 he

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has allowed his image of Constance White to stalk the pages of Candle between the printed lines. mordred As her malevolence affected Mordred most deeply, an understanding of Morgause demands a discussion of her maimed son Mordred. His is the crooked figure whose malevolent genius informs Candle and brings about the destruction of Arthur and his chivalry. The malign antagonist of his father, he is Arthur’s own bastard son born out of the incestuous coupling of the king with his half-sister. He has been reared by his beautiful, wicked mother in the remote, superstition-fogged fastnesses of the Orkneys. Morgause has made her son fall in love with her. In nightmarish fashion, she has bewildered him by her capricious whims and by lavishing on the boy times of cloying affection succeeded by periods in which she has withheld her love, indifferent to him and sometimes even contemptuous. He follows his older brothers to Arthur’s court. There Arthur, overcome by regret, has tried to make amends to him and has in fact treated Mordred with love and a scrupulous courtesy. Arthur, even sorely tried by Mordred’s provocation, forbids his champion Lancelot to solve the problem by killing Mordred, even though Mordred has been the motivating force for Arthur having to face squarely the fact of his cuckoldry and the loss of his best friend—Arthur, when he goes to France, leaves Mordred behind as the Lord Protector. In White, the issue between Arthur and Mordred is made even more dramatic by having no Lyonors, and no Sir Borre; in White, Mordred is Arthur’s only child. Mordred has a clear, musical voice. Sometimes he finds himself saying things which surprise him. He is followed by a little black pug dog. Little by little, he has been going mad. In Chapter 10: ‘If you had looked closely, you might have noticed that Mordred’s manner in the past six months had become stranger.’42 In Chapter 11, when he speaks with Guenever, his mental decay is evident: ‘Anybody who had not seen him for a month or two would have known at once that he was mad—but his brains had gone so gradually that those who lived with him had failed to see it.’43

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He is described as a ‘cold wisp of a man,’44 whose misshapen shoulder is concealed beneath the richness of his dress. Mordred and Gawaine have both taken to wearing black, ‘but with the strange difference that Mordred was resplendent in his, a sort of Hamlet, while Gawaine looked more like the gravedigger.’45 Gawaine dresses in black out of respect for his dead brothers slain by Lancelot’s hand, but Mordred began ‘dressing with this dramatic simplicity since the time when he had become leader in the popular party.’46 At Agravaine’s urging, Mordred has become a fomentor of racist causes, whose aims were some kind of nationalism, with Gaelic autonomy, and a massacre of the Jews as well, in revenge for a mythical saint called Hugh of Lincoln. There were already thousands, spread over the country, who carried his badge of a scarlet fist clenching a whip, and who called themselves Thrashers.47

When it came time for White to give a name to Mordred’s party, a party whose shadowy political principles embodied the stinking emanations of White’s hatreds, he must have had precious little difficulty in coming up with the ‘Thrashers.’ The hatred of physical cruelty in which he luxuriated, and the obverse love from time to time extended him, which his nature forced him to repudiate and despise, demanded of White’s wit no less than an appellation which would epitomize them. Hence, The Thrashers. It is White’s own clownish crying to the world at large, similar to the carefully written throw away line in his 1963 American lecture on Hadrian: ‘There is a genuine affliction of middle-aged people, which the psychiatrists call Pedophilia….I have it myself.’

Mordred’s actions are motivated by nothing more than revenge against his father. He is not in any way sustained by any discernible moral code, let alone one whose tenets are in consonance with the chivalric ideals of the Round Table. Yet he shows himself clever enough and quick enough to take advantage of the King’s New Justice by accusing Lancelot and the queen of treachery. Mordred not only seeks his father’s destruction, but he attempts to perpetuate a pattern that he alone can determine by seeking to wed his father’s wife.

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Mordred’s most impressive scene in Candle occurs in Chapter 11, when he comes to see Guenever at Carlisle Castle, in the black north. Guenever and her maid, Agnes, do their sewing and speak of Arthur’s siege of Lancelot in France. Their conversation turns to Mordred, and Agnes criticizes the Lord Protector for wearing black. Guenever explains that the black is supposedly a sign of mourning for Gareth. ‘He never cared for Sir Gareth, that one didn’t,’48 Agnes replies with discernment. Later, Agnes admits her fear of Mordred: ‘He walks about so softly lately, and…looks at people in a queer way. And then there are all these speeches about Gaels and Saxons and Jews, and all the shouting and hysterics. I heard him laughing last week, by himself. It was horrible.’49

Soon the women have succeeded in frightening each other. Agnes, dared to do so, goes to the door and opens it. Mordred is standing there; she scuttles past him, leaving her mistress alone. Mordred sits down with the pug on his lap, and begins talking with Guenever, who has already been thinking about him and his mother. Guenever acts imperiously toward Mordred. When he is insolent to her, ‘it raised her stature to the royal lady which she was, to a straight-backed dowager whose rheumatic fingers flashed with rings, who had ridden the world successfully for fifty years.’50 Guenever is, after all, fearless. She tells Mordred that she will leave if he doesn’t behave himself like a gentleman. Where will she go, Mordred asks her? Guenever replies: ‘I should go anywhere: anywhere where a woman old enough to be your mother would be safe from this extravagance.’51 The unmistakable implication of this comment is to suggest that, indeed, Mordred is looking for a mother. But it is soon clear that Mordred feels a quite different attraction for Guenever: ‘I was thinking of a pattern, Jenny, a simple pattern.’ She watched him without speaking. ‘Yes. My father committed incest with my mother. Don’t you think it would be a pattern, Jenny, if I were to answer it by marrying my father’s wife?’52

The idea of Mordred attempting to marry Guenever was not new with Malory. His source for this part of the story was the alliterative

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Morte Arthure; the tradition goes back through La Mort Le Roi Artu to Wace’s Roman de Brut, to Geoffrey of Monmouth.53 But if there is not with White generally any lingering on the sexual aspects of Malory’s tales, there is in his depiction of Mordred’s proposition to Guenever a lascivious emphasis, which makes the scene far more intense than anything that has come before it. As the evil genius of Candle, Mordred’s malignant plotting deracinates the vine-like liaison between Lancelot and Guenever; forces Arthur to face fairly the fact of his cuckoldry and stand by his New Justice in a wicked cause; brings about the deaths of his two half-brothers; rives the chivalry of the Round Table into dissenting factions; succeeds in banishing Lancelot who is honor-bound to Arthur not to kill Mordred; and ultimately kills his father and places the realm in great jeopardy. The motivation for this chain of events must be utterly convincing or the tragedy will fail as a work of art. Were Mordred merely mad, for example, and acting gratuitously, the destruction of Arthur’s chivalry would be regrettable, surely, but it would lack about its dissolution the profound sense of irony that comes from recognition of the justice of the motivation, however warped. It is this detached ironic recognition that inspires so much of classic tragedy. There must be, at the time of the catastrophe, an awareness by the audience that the downfall of the hero is being caused by some integral flaw in his personality, a flaw that can often be thought of as a virtue: ‘Error or Frailty.’54 Here, Arthur’s flaw is a belief in the innate goodness of mankind, a belief that is held tenaciously in the face of evidence thrown in his teeth from a lifetime’s experience to the contrary, a belief spontaneous and generous-spirited. The fundamental sweetness in Arthur’s character keeps him from publicly recognizing Lancelot and Guenever’s affair, prompts his courtesy in withdrawing from their chamber, which he has entered unannounced when he finds them speaking intimately, makes him instruct them, like children, precisely what it is that Mordred is planning, and why he will be powerless to act in their behalf. Arthur is shown by White to be infinitely kind; the recounting of the May-Day slaughter of the children hits the reader like a pail of cold water. One has the feeling that White himself would have given a great deal to have omitted mention of it.

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But one has the feeling, too, that Arthur’s downfall at the hands of Mordred is not entirely justified either by the king’s credulity, or by his hasty action in trying to have Mordred killed: the reason why Arthur comes to a bad end is indeed because he slept with his sister. The sexual transgression is just as important as the violation of the taboo. Here is a perfect chance to cast a heterosexual relationship in its most depressing light, and a perfect opportunity for White to pay back the maternal rape on the child. For it is Morgause who is made to take the blame, both for Arthur’s seduction, and for Mordred’s despicable machinations. White himself admitted that Morgause was a portrait of his mother,55 and it is her invalidating presence in the book that made his rewriting of Witch so supremely demanding. When, in writing about the ‘Nemesis of Incest,’ White came to envision the wicked Queen Morgause, he found in his recollection of Constance White a model for her ready to his hand. But Constance White asserted herself even over the queen. White’s efforts to expunge from his novel the mingled hatred and fear he felt for his mother were not successful, and she would prove almost impossible for him to discard in later versions and later books no matter what form she took. Cut her role, compress the book itself, change the ‘rowdy Cleopatra’ into a straight Celtic witch—even so, what Constance White meant to her son remains to haunt both novels—the mother who suffered White out of jealousy to have no playmates of his own age; who, in her letters home to England when White was just a baby, mentioned his existence only three times; who could with damnable ease reach out all the way from India when White was at school in England to thank him for the gift of a photograph by rebuking him for his ‘sensual lips;’ and who would end up driving her son from one desolate location to another, to taking solace in alcohol, driving him from one demanding and frequently dangerous pursuit to another, to try desperately to throttle his demons, to expiate sins which he had as yet only imagined.

From the Journals of T.H. White Printed by kind permission of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Chapter Six Guenever

G

uenever is White’s only full-drawn woman in TOAFK, and the success of his achievement is made more remarkable when one considers the failure of Morgause, for example, to be more than a onedimensional drawing etched in acid, almost a caricature. Guenever is a polychrome oil painting, not a pen-and-ink sketch. Although Guenever appears only in the final two books of TOAFK, the reader rarely, if ever, forgets her presence in them. But it is Candle that is her book, possessing as it does some of the most poignant scenes in TOAFK between the aged lovers Guenever and Lancelot. Knight is of course Lancelot’s book, not Guenever’s, and when the end comes the focus of attention is on the kneeling figure of Lancelot in the center of the great field, weeping ‘as he had been a child that had been beaten.’1 Guenever herself, in the stands, is almost in the wings. And yet the character of Lancelot would never have been so brilliantly determined were it not for the envisionment of Guenever: she is the force that has made him achieve his noble stature. She is a proud woman, an individual who rails at fate, and loves, and is subject to sudden, spiteful rages. She is painted round, and she is a genuine literary creation. In the margin of his copy of Malory 2 opposite the part of the story that tells of the death of Elaine and the arrival of the barge bearing her body to the palace,3 when Guenever, in a passionate reversal of form, upbraids Lancelot for not showing the dead girl more kindness while she was alive, White made the notation: ‘I have a certain angry affection for Guenever—for her spontaneity.’ Earlier in Malory, White had recognized the difficulty (which he was later in his journals to describe at length) of reconciling her contradictions. In the event, retaining his affection for her spontaneity, he did both: Guenever is full of human contradictions, and she is still a romantic heroine.

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White, in an unpublished essay on Malory, which was to serve as an appendix to TOAFK, written on 8 December 1939,4 noted that Malory was ‘more interested in plots and ethics than in character,’ and that, while Malory was able ‘to draw [characters] with the strength of a few lightning strokes,’ White himself had, in TOAFK, ‘tediously discussed their motives.’ At the same time, White emphasized that it was the motives of Malory’s characters that he had been discussing in his novel, and not his own. He might as well have been speaking about Guenever; the ‘lightning stroke’ image is particularly apt. These sudden bursts of illumination do indeed punctuate Malory’s narrative with character descriptions of vivid clarity. But White may have been less than honest with himself when he said that it was not his own characters whose motives he had been discussing in TOAFK, but Malory’s: Malory seems to me to lack the ‘angry affection’ toward Guenever which White felt. Malory portrays Guenever rather unsympathetically as wilful, haughty, and frequently disdainful of Lancelot, even to the point of commanding him to do something on her behalf that will debase him. She sounds, inevitably, like the temptress Morgan Le Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: But no marvel is it for a fool to act madly, Through woman’s wiles to be brought to woe. So for certain was Adam deceived by some woman, By several Solomon, Samson besides; Delilah dealt him his doom; and David Was duped by Bath-sheba, enduring much sorrow.5

Besides, for all its clarity, the illumination provided by a lightning stroke is only momentary. White’s Guenever pervades Knight and Candle, and she is held in focus throughout. Even as he was being less than honest with himself when he said that he was not discussing the motivation of his own characters, but Malory’s, so too was White less than fair to his own talents when he said that he had ‘tediously discussed their motives.’ Tedium is nowhere apparent; there is color everywhere, nowhere more breathtaking than with the ‘rose-petalled’6 Guenever. The first extended appraisal of Guenever’s character and the part she was to play in TOAFK appears in White’s journal entry for 10 October 1939:

guenever Much more important question than what sort of person was Lancelot is what sort of person was Guenever? She must have been a nice person, or Lancelot and Arthur (both nice people) would not have loved her. Or does this not follow? Do nice people love nasty ones? Arthur was not a judge of nice people or he would not have had a child by Morgause. And Guenever hardly seems to have been a favourite of Malory’s, whatever Tennyson may have thought about her. She was insanely jealous of Lancelot: she drove him mad: she was suspected of being a poisoner: she made no bones about being unfaithful to Arthur: she had an ungovernable temper: she did not mind telling lies: she was hysterical, according to Sir Bors: she was beastly to Elaine: she was intensely selfish. Yet I have already had one unattractive woman in the epic—Morgause— and it goes against the grain to have two, especially if Lancelot is to love her. Nice people do love nasty ones. But it seems to lower them somehow. What is to be done? Guenever had some good characteristics. She chose the best lover she could have done, and she was brave enough to let him be her lover: she always stuck to Arthur, though unfaithful to him, possibly because she really liked him: when finally caught, she faced the music: she had a clear judgment of moral issues, even when defying them, a sort of common sense which finally took her into a convent when she could quite well have stayed with Lancelot now that her husband was dead. Was this a piece of clearsightedness or was it cowardice? One way to put it would be to say that she grasped the best of two men while she profited by it, but afterwards betrayed them both. When there was no more to be got out of the Arthur-Lancelot situation she preferred the convent. The other way to put it would be to say that she finally recognized her ill influence and thought it best to shut herself up. She was brave, beautiful, married young by treaty. She had very little control over her feelings, which were often generous: cf. her tears, weeping as though she would die over Lancelot’s recovery. Guenever was like most women, Elaine like most girls.

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t.h. white’s troubled heart Guenever was not a girl, but a grown woman. She exercised control, demanded return, felt jealousy. The adult and the child: the difference between adolescence and adultery. One can’t imagine Elaine having a ‘change of life.’ Guenever could have it and did, and was extremely trying to everybody. It is plain that Guenever was a woman of character. She must have been a passionate lover. Could she be a sort of tigress, with all the healthy charms and horrors of the carnivore? Is she to eat Lancelot as Morgause ate Arthur? It seems to make him so much less the man. Yet both he and Arthur were heroworshippers. Do people hero-worship tigresses? Arthur looked up to Merlyn and Lancelot looked up to Arthur. Were they both lookers-up, who needed a tigress to look up to?7

One runs the risk, I think, of taking this evaluation of Guenever and attaching too much importance to it. It is an easy mistake to make, for from early days even White’s journal and diary entries are written with such polish that one tends to dismiss the idea that the thoughts contained in them are not fully formed. Taken as a whole, the passage is simply a preliminary investigation of what character traits might be presumed to have directed Guenever’s actions. Reading this passage, one thinks of hounds casting, drawing a succession of likely coverts, and tonguing on line after starting game: hunting by scent, perhaps, and not by sight. The hounds riot, and are called off by the huntsman, and the process is repeated with enthusiasm unabated. Warner’s simile is more dramatic: Like a man on boggy ground, who leaps from tussock to sinking tussock, he zigzagged from conjecture to conjecture. The nice person gives way; he lands on someone insanely jealous, maddening, suspected of poisoning, faithless, hot-tempered, a liar, beastly to Elaine, intensely selfish. It seemed a foothold; but the creator’s plain common sense that another Morgause wouldn’t do tumbled him off it. She is a nasty person with some good characteristics. This tussock gave way when he began to examine her reasons for entering the convent; the first is base, the second posits an entirely different Guenever. At last he landed on the tigress ‘with all the healthy charms and horrors of the carnivore.’ He could have looked up to a tigress himself. Exhausted, he sank down on the tigress—though in the event, he revised her.8

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Warner is correct: White’s Guenever is a tigress, or, rather, as the daughter of King Leodegrance, a lioness; but she is indeed revised from embodying ‘all the healthy charms and horrors of the carnivore.’ White’s Guenever is much, much more. She is a heroine, true, but she has all the strengths and failings of a real person. Characters, in order to be round literary creations, must be composed of the same shortcomings, inconsistencies, ambiguities, contradictions, and occasional magnanimities and generosities as real people. This is true of Guenever. The story is there in Malory. The plot that White saw in Malory is there. So are Guenever’s actions related. What White did was to provide the motivations for those actions. He described Guenever’s character in such a way as to make her actions plausible and moving. His ‘angry affection’ for the Queen is apparent. If he had been left to his own devices, White’s inclination in creating a character ex nihilo (at least so far as women were concerned) would be to invent a Morgause, and not a Guenever. But with Malory to go by, White’s powers of invention were put to the task of providing motivation, and not to the invention of the character herself. Another reason for White’s success with Guenever might be that White, like Malory and Tennyson, had a sincere hero-worship for Lancelot. None but a genuine heroine would be proper to serve as Lancelot’s mistress: anything else would be demeaning. Lancelot’s character might have been enriched if White had seen Guenever as a different sort of woman. If she had been fragile and gentle, perhaps, the contrast between Lancelot’s gentleness in falling in love with her and the fury of his sword arm could have been accentuated. But to some extent this is the kind of person Elaine is, and the queen must contrast with her. White must have found it desperately hard work, at least at first. The disadvantages under which White labored in writing about women were real, not imagined. The exception was, of course, Ray Garnett, whom White regarded with great and unaffected respect: If it turns out to be a good book, as I suspect it may, it will be due to Ray. Some things she said at Sheskin made me think in an improved way, and particularly to settle down and read the Russians. It will be through them, but particularly through Ray, that Guenever has turned out to be a living being. Ray was impatient with me for not attending

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t.h. white’s troubled heart to my women: I have attended to Guenever with something more than respect. With fear, almost.9

This is the voice of a writer speaking, accepting just criticism from someone for whom he felt respect, acknowledging his failings. Until Guenever, the women in TOAFK have been slighted, not through any desire on White’s part to do this, but simply through an almost chemical inability to come to grips with his female characters as women. When one reads White’s earlier journal entries concerning women—and, in the journal for 1939–41, there are several passages in which White discusses women in general terms10—one is made aware of a curious distance between author and subject. There is no familiarity. The tone in which White discusses women has a resemblance to the tone in which he discusses (in his diaries which became England Have My Bones) drawing coverts and watching hounds work while out for a day’s hunting with the Grafton, or killing a salmon at Beldorney, or the nature of plover, or the idiosyncrasies of different aircraft. White knows he is writing about women, but they seem to be worthy of his attention as creatures of another species, not as the female of his own kind. Sometimes, as with Ray Garnett, White shows respect for a woman—which is not to say that he was rude or discourteous, for he was not—but the respect is almost always a respect for her intellectual capabilities, and, with the compliment, there is often a note of unfeigned surprise to his entry, as though he had not expected to discover such a virtue in such an unpromising hostess. One sometimes feels that, when White writes about women in his journals, almost instinctively his skills as a naturalist are being summoned up, rather than his responses as a man. His assessment of women seems to be without regard for any sexual message they may have carried for him. I cannot recall an instance in his journals or diaries where White’s reactions toward a woman are ever influenced or colored by a positive sexual response to her as an individual. Consideration of their sexuality is usually predicated upon consideration of them as a class, without regard to individuality, and the finding is almost always negative. His note on ‘hysteria’ is just such a case in point.11 And a certain kind of woman, admittedly not attractive to begin with—ill-educated, intellectually pretentious, assertive—seems immediately to arouse a fulminating, disproportionate kind of antipathy.

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All of these handicaps make White’s creation of Guenever as an enormously attractive woman, vital, sensual, and rash, a genuine achievement. To envision her sexuality, he must have worked in the same spirit as he did in 1956, on Alderney, when he taught himself Braille so that he would be able to communicate with the deaf-blind for whom he developed such affection. It is as if he were a painter without experience of women at first-hand, save, perhaps, for a few wretched models, who set himself the task of painting a portrait along the lines of Botticelli’s Primavera, using only other paintings as his guide. Here White rises above his personality. He has found it possible to depict sympathetically a passion he does not share. White’s Guenever grieves; she has scars. And one need not take into account the staggering odds against which he worked in creating her to arrive at a favorable estimate of Guenever; she stands on her own merits. But the truth is that White did work against great odds, so that there is a nobility to White’s purpose and to his achievement. Surely, if it is true that writers use themselves and their experiences as a replenishing well from which to draw their art, it is true that there is something of White himself, or at least one side of him, in Guenever as well as in Lancelot. One is reminded again of Garnett’s statement about White’s sadism. There is something of this here in Guenever’s actions when she greets Elaine and commands Lancelot to stay in his room. She is clearly acting against her better judgment. She must prove Lancelot’s love for her by hurting him. She is angry: angry that Elaine had Lancelot first, and has borne his son. The wonder of this is that Guenever does not lose us; there is an element of humanness that shines through her hysteria. Nevertheless, it is wrong to suppose that White was blind to her efforts to manipulate Lancelot. That he knew that there was a fundamental choice to be made in his portrait of Guenever is attested to by a marginal note in his copy of Malory, opposite the scene when Guenever first learns of Lancelot’s relationship with Elaine. The simple language underscores White’s artistic integrity: ‘Better face it and cut out the romantic idea of Guenever. But try to make her human?’12 And this is what he has done here, in her reactions to Lancelot’s presumed infidelity and Elaine’s arrival: she is hysterical, self-centered—and Jenny.

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White varies the distance from which Guenever speaks by changing her name. When she is intimate, she is ‘Jenny;’ when she is on neutral ground, she is often ‘Guenever;’ when she is furious, or imperious, she is ‘the Queen.’ Arthur’s image of Guenever as ‘rose-petalled’ is a particularly good one: it has implicit in it the notion of carpe rosam, carpe diem, and of course enjoys besides the usual beautiful woman-lovely flower parallel, with its overtones of the transience of life and love, the medieval connotation as well, both of holy love—and secular, themes well established in such works as Le Roman de la Rose. Guenever is described as having blue eyes that ‘had a sort of fearlessness’13 and black hair—the same coloration as Morgause. White was aware of and chose to ignore the tradition that Guenever was a blonde. In his Strachey Malory, White underscored in the Introduction the mention of Henry II’s opening of Arthur’s tomb at Glastonbury and the king’s declaration that Guenever’s hair was yellow. He refers to this legend in Merlyn also.14 The reader is immediately struck by the identical coloration of Guenever and Morgause. What useful purpose this reminder of Morgause serves is not readily apparent. Morgause is depraved, a vicious queen; Guenever, a great queen. White’s attempt to depict the volatile Guenever sympathetically could not help but be hurt by the reader seeing in her a similarity to White’s hated Morgause. In writing about Guenever, White would already be laboring under quite enough handicaps without willingly burdening himself with another. It is difficult to determine whether Constance White may have had black hair and blue eyes. Judging from the photograph of her that appears in Warner’s book,15 it is not impossible that she did have this coloring. Certainly, her hair is dark, and her eyes appear to be light. If so, perhaps White’s coloration of Guenever is a kind of grace note to Constance White in apology for having depicted her in such thoroughly brutal fashion in Witch and Queen. And even if Constance White did not in fact have black hair and blue eyes, her identification with Morgause is complete; in attributing to Guenever Morgause’s coloring, White is making further commentary on Constance White.16

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One reason for the similarity in coloring between Guenever and Morgause might be that, when writing about women, White admitted to himself that he was stuck with writing about only one woman, Constance White, so that when it came time to write about Guenever, he would be faced with writing about Constance White once more. But this time he would describe his mother as if she were viewed from a completely different angle, with her good qualities much exaggerated and bad ones almost dismissed from sight. Both women are daughters of kings, both are selfish, and both go after what they want. They are both beautiful. Both lie and have ungovernable tempers. Morgause, however, is said by White to have been lascivious and unchaste; Guenever, who, like Morgause, is unfaithful to her husband, is presumably only passionate. Morgause is promiscuous; Guenever takes only one lover, Lancelot, and stays true to him. Morgause is arrogant and contemptuous toward Lot; Guenever is honestly fond of Arthur. Morgause’s womb teems with spawn; Guenever is barren. Morgause is fascinated by witchcraft; Guenever is forthright. She is honorable in the way she speaks of Arthur to Lancelot when they are alone. Morgause is cruel; Guenever is loving. Morgause is slain by her sons while in bed with a young lover when she is seventy; Guenever ends her days in a nunnery. Morgause cannot be conceived of as having the sensitivity and magnanimity of Guenever—but are not these qualities only refined and laudable mutants of morbidity and capriciousness? Morgause’s own characteristics have been changed around. The further one goes with this sort of topsy-turvy comparison of Morgause (and Constance White) to Guenever, the more persuaded one becomes that White’s identification of coloring between the two women was deliberate. Perhaps it would not be too much to say that, in Guenever, White saw the qualities he thought he should see in Constance White were he her lover and not her smitten son. guenever and lancelot As with Morgause, a fuller understanding of Guenever demands that one examine the men who surround her as well. The final book of the tetralogy provides ample material for such a discussion as Candle relates in neatly envisioned scenes Arthur’s downfall, the end of the Lancelot-

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Guenever romance, and the disintegration of the Round Table. The title suggests a feeling of impermanence, and imparts to the whole book a mood of melancholy, a recognition of evanescence. Throughout all of the book, images of flame, firelight, and candlelight flicker and dance. Toward the end of the book, a great wind of sorrow roars. The contest is unequal, though the aged Arthur elicits from the young page Tom of Newbold Revell the promise that he will carry the candle and tell the story of King Arthur as he has had it told to him. The reader is made extraordinarily sensitive to the transiency of such concepts as honor; of the terrible frailty of human ideals and aspirations; of nobility and sacrifice, of compassion; of the desperately hard-won construction of a code of chivalry and of a system of justice for all men; of the decency of age; of the not-to-be-gainsaid, self-destructive riot for revenge; of blood-guilt, and of retribution. Besides the central images of fire and wind, there is another vocabulary of imagery as well which strengthens the impression of approaching destruction. The settings for the book are, without exception, indoors, and the action in the book takes place over the time of a year, beginning in the spring and ending in the late winter. The reader is aware of sunlight and darkness, sunset and twilight and, at the last, the moments before dawn. This imagery pervades the scenes in which Guenever appears. Lancelot and Guenever sing together in Chapters 3 and 4 on a spring evening in the sundown of chivalry; when Arthur comes to speak with them, it is already dark, and he orders candles. After having warned them of Mordred’s intentions, he ‘stood up in the firelight.’17 The Orkney faction plots against Arthur in the painted Justice Room, completely enclosed with hangings; it is night, and ‘the five men glittered in the candlelight.’18 Lancelot’s own room, when Gareth comes to warn him, is described as dark, ‘except for the one light in front of the holy picture,’19 and, at the end of the chapter, when he goes to meet Guenever, Lancelot steps ‘into the darkness of the passage.’20 In Chapter 7, Guenever awaits him ‘in the candle-light of her splendid bedroom,’21 and there is much mention of the stillness with which the candles’ flames burn, of reflections, and of sparkling: there is not even a slight wind to disturb them. Lancelot brushes Guenever’s hair. Later in the chapter, when Lancelot prepares himself to open the door, he places the candles behind

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him, and before he leaves to fight the waiting knights outside, ‘the old lady turned him to face the candles.’22 In Chapter 8, the Orkney faction and Arthur wait in the Justice Room for Guenever’s sentence of death to be carried out. The ‘room looked different by daylight.’23 Mordred observes that ‘they are using seasoned wood, and there will be no smoke, and she will burn before she suffocates.’24 After the processional begins, Guenever is given candles to hold.25 When Lancelot fights his way to the pyre, she has been ‘abandoned by the cluster of ministrants who had obscured her,’26 and, like a flame herself, ‘Guenever stood like a beacon. In her white shift, tied to the high stake, she remained motionless in the movement. She rode above them.’27 In Chapter 9, when the lovers are being besieged at Joyous Gard, it is six months later ‘on a bright winter day.’28 Lancelot and Guenever stand by a log fire in the great hall. Joyous Gard is a happy, colorful castle, and ‘fires were no longer lit in the middle of rooms, leaving the smoke to escape as best it could through lanterns. Here there was a proper fireplace, richly carved with the arms and supporters of Benwick, and half a tree smouldered in the grate.’29 Lancelot stares into the fire, thinking of Gareth. When once Guenever might have bridled at Lancelot’s tactless suggestion that all would be well if only Arthur would take her back, ‘it was a measure of their autumn that now she was amused.’30 At the end of the chapter, Guenever comforts Lancelot, and strokes ‘his white hair.’31 In Chapter 10, the reconciliation scene takes place in the Justice Room, once more a ‘cube of tapestry, an empty vase’32 which, with the entrance of the magnificent court, begins to flower. Chapter 11 takes place on a winter evening in Mordred’s north country, at Carlisle Castle: ‘A late fall of snow threw the evening light upward into the chamber, shining on the ceiling more than on the floor, so as to alter the usual shadows. They were blue, and in the wrong places.’33 After Guenever and Agnes speak about Lancelot, Guenever says, ‘The light gets bad, Agnes. Do you think we could have the rushes?’ ‘Certainly, madam. I was thinking the same myself.’ She began lighting them at the fire, grumbling about the backward place and the naked, northern savages to have no candles, while Guenever

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t.h. white’s troubled heart hummed absently. It was the duet which she used to sing with Lancelot, and, when she recognized it, she stopped abruptly. ‘There, madam. The days seem to draw out.’ ‘Yes: we shall have the spring soon.’34

The women soon frighten themselves with speech of Mordred, and ‘the hopeless rushlights were not enough.’35 When Mordred appears he has ‘one cold diamond beaming in the rushlight.’36 It is not until Chapter 13 that the second great informing image of Candle, the wind, is introduced against the flickering candle-light. It is an unequal contest. The duelists are mismatched. Mastery of the field belongs to the great wind of sorrow, but the gallant candle-light flickers and dances until the end. The appearance of the wind, delayed so long, is tremendous: Anguish of Ireland had once dreamed of a wind which blew down all their castles and towns—and this one was conspiring to do it. It was blowing round Benwick Castle on all the organ stops. The noises it made sounded like inchoate masses of silk being pulled through trees, as we pull hair through a comb…Above all, it sounded like a live creature: some monstrous elemental being, wailing its damnation. It was Dante’s wind, bearing lost lovers and cranes: sabbathless Satan, toiling and turmoiling…In the whipping and snapping branches of the trees, the birds rode it out head to wind, their bodies horizontal, their neat claws turned to anchors. The peregrines in the cliffs sat stoically, their muttonchop-whiskers made streaky by the rain and the wet feathers standing upright on their heads. The wild geese beating out to their night’s rest in the twilight scarcely won a yard a minute against the streaming air, their tumultuary cries blown backward from them, so that they had to be past before you heard them, although they were only a few feet up…Bors and Bleoberis were crouching over a bright fire, to which the bitter wind seemed to have given the property of throwing off light without heat. Even the fire seemed frozen like a painted one. Their minds were baffled by the plague of air.37

It is in Chapter 3 of Candle that White gives the reader the first sight of the lovers, Guenever and Lancelot. Chapter 3 is a rather long (11 pages) chapter devoted, for the most part, to a passionate depiction of the medieval scene. But it begins with a description of Lancelot and Guenever:

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Lancelot and Guenever were sitting at the solar window. An observer of the present day, who knew the Arthurian legend only from Tennyson and people of that sort, would have been startled to see that the famous lovers were past their prime. We, who have learned to base our interpretation of love on the conventional boy-and-girl romance of Romeo and Juliet, would be amazed if we could step back into the Middle Ages—when the poet of chivalry could write about Man that he had ‘en ciel un dieu, par terre une deesse.’ Lovers were not recruited then among the juveniles and adolescents: they were seasoned people, who knew what they were about. In those days people loved each other for their lives, without the conveniences of the divorce court and the psychiatrist. They had a God in heaven and a goddess on earth—and, since people who devote themselves to goddesses must exercise some caution about the ones to whom they are devoted, they neither chose them by the passing standards of the flesh alone, nor abandoned it lightly when the bruckle thing began to fail.38

White’s slap at Tennyson—‘Tennyson and people of that sort’—is not nearly so instinctively gratuitous as it appears to be on the surface. White never let his intention deviate from seeing the lovers as he thought they should be, and he had little forbearance for Victorian romanticism. In his lengthy Malory essay he wrote : The great Victorian revival of Arthur took hold of the already complicated time sequence…and transferred it into a fantastic century which existed nowhere except in the minds of Tennyson & Rossetti & Burne-Jones. Malory’s knights, whose main armament was the chain mail, were now tricked out in a fantastic version of plate, in which the pauldrons were iron ivy-leaves and God knows what. They were transported to the ruins of Victorian lunatic asylums, where, with brambles curling around their ivy-plated knees, they looked upwards swooningly into a misty nimbus surrounding the vicar’s communion chalice.

Several pages later, White again lets his ire bubble freely: So peculiarly sad is the present-day attitude towards one of our greatest national poets, both on the part of the multitude and on that of the pedants, that I am reduced to the shameful necessity of repeating in the simplest language—for it has become a fact altogether neglected—that the characters in Mallory are real characters, not ‘knights-in-armor:’ that his Gawaine was passionate, his Lancelot muddled, his Guenever domineering, his Arthur kind: that the plot of his Morte d’Arthur was the tragic nemesis which I have endeavored to reproduce (an Elizabethan dramatist called Hughes also perceived it) in opposition to the muslin dreams of Tennyson, and the bowdlerization of Victorian editors, and the

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t.h. white’s troubled heart peculiar mixture of pedantry and blinkers worn by people like BurneJones, and the now universal ignorance of the general reader.39

That White apparently was not aware of a great deal of contemporary Malory scholarship is not in dispute. What is important is that he once again is plainly at pains to announce his plans for following his master Malory and for seeing Malory’s characters clearly, and not through muslin. One of the more ironic paradoxes that one encounters in reading White is that at the same time he fewters lance against the Victorians, and tilts at Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites in exuberant fashion, he apparently is unaware of the fact that all writers on the Arthurian matter, including Malory, have bent the subject to suit their purposes; his particular view of Malory is not only not unique, but shares with Tennyson and others a respectable coloring of Victorian-inspired morality. Warner has written, speaking on another subject, that if White ‘was sexually speculative, he was by inclination moral.’40 That holds true of his writing, too. For all his acquaintance with technique, and awareness of psychology, White was too rooted in the classics and his upbringing too traditional to make a sensational deviation an attractive artistic proposition. Throughout Candle, White is careful to portray the lovers as having aged. They do not miraculously survive the twenty-four-year span of their affair clothed in the bodies and minds of their youth. White stresses, too, the unreliability of physical beauty as a guide to virtue, and the knowledge that, when it is predicated upon desires of the flesh, love is ‘bruckle’ and very likely to fail. For a man who has some hard things to say about Victorian poets and painters, White seems to get along famously with the system of values that they embody. It has been said that great writers must be able to envision their characters not only in their middle years, but at the extremes of life’s spectrum, old age and childhood, as well. Contrary to most writers, White found the extremes easier for him than the middle years. With few exceptions, his most memorable characters are likely to be those who are either elderly or children. So it is in Candle that the reader is aware of an almost palpable sense of relief on White’s part, now that the lovers

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are no longer young. Presumably, they are free from the fiery physical passion of their youth, and his artistic integrity no longer requires him to recognize and describe that facet of their intimacy. White is, in Candle, now happily free to envision for his aging lovers the kind of idealized attachment that he found so attractive, tender and secure, from which almost all traces of physical passion, due to the passage of time, may be legitimately erased. And he can indulge himself in delivering a few home truths about the instability of adolescent romances, which he plainly detests, and the capital virtues of monogamy and fidelity. Divorce courts and psychiatrists also receive the back of his hand. Staunchness is the thing; love, particularly love based on physical attraction, is ‘bruckle’ and likely to fail. Chapter 4 continues the description of the lovers at the solar window: Lancelot and Guenever looked over the sundown of chivalry, from the tower window. Their black profiles stood out in silhouette against the setting light. Lancelot’s, the old ugly man’s, was the outline of a gargoyle. It might have looked in hideous meditation from Notre Dame, his contemporary church. But, in its maturity, it was nobler than before. The lines of ugliness had sunk to rest as lines of strength. Like the bulldog, which is one of the most betrayed of dogs, Lancelot had grown a face which people could trust. The touching thing was that the two were singing. Their voices, no longer full in tone like those of people in the strength of youth, were still tenacious of the note. If they were thin, they were pure. They supported one another.41

White provides one with a cluster of images which, on an immediately accessible level, enhance one’s enjoyment of the story by helping one to experience the setting, not merely visualize it. But on another level, these images, and their connotative meanings, serve to focus one’s attention on Candle’s overriding concerns: the dying day, the dying chivalry, departed youth, the nobility of age. Later, other images of saints and angels will reinforce the religious atmosphere in which both Lancelot and Guenever will end their days. The greatness of spirit which the lovers have, their mutual respect and esteem for one another, combine in their singing to provide an affecting scene. Both here, and later, when the lovers are surprised by

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Mordred and Agravaine, White has been careful to choose for the lovers an occupation that is intimate and yet harmless. In Chapter 7, after the queen has sent for Lancelot, she waits for him in her bed-chamber. It is now night, and the last of sunset’s slanting rays have been engulfed by the darkness; with the last of light, the old chivalry, the old code of honor will vanish, too. Mordred and Agravaine are about to surprise the lovers, accuse them of treachery, and bring them before the king. This is the last moment when Lancelot’s and Guenever’s liaison is on its old footing. Through the machinations of Mordred, the delicate balance is about to be shifted irrevocably: Guenever waited for Lancelot in the candlelight of her splendid bedroom, brushing her gray hair. She looked singularly lovely, not like a film star, but like a woman who had grown a soul. She was singing by herself. It was a hymn—of all things—the beautiful Veni, Sancte Spiritus which is supposed to have been written by a Pope. The candle flames, rising up stilly on the night air, were reflected from the golden lioncels which studded the deep blue canopy of the bed. The combs and brushes sparkled with ornaments in cut paste. A large chest of polished latoun had saints and angels enamelled in the panels. The brocaded hangings beamed on the walls in soft folds—and, on the floor, a desperate and reprehensible luxury, there was a genuine carpet. It made people shy when they walked on it, since carpets were not originally intended for mere floors. Arthur used to walk round it. Guenever was singing and brushing, her low voice fitting the stillness of the candles, when the door opened softly. The commander-in-chief dropped his black cloak on the chest and stepped across to stand behind her. She saw him in the mirror without surprise. ‘May I do it for you?’ ‘If you like.’ He took the brush, and began sweeping it through the silver avalanche with fingers which were deft from practice, while the Queen closed her eyes.42

Again, there is the stress on unreliability of physical beauty as an index to virtue. Guenever, the reader is told, ‘looked singularly lovely, not like a film star, but like a woman who had grown a soul.’ The accent

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is on sincerity, on fidelity and the rightness in holding things eternal above things temporal: Guenever is now in glorious possession of her seventh sense,43 the knowledge of the world. Like Lancelot’s gargoyle image, Guenever’s hymn provides a religious overtone to the scene, emphasized by mention of angels and saints. The impact of the scene made by the imagery is one of candle-light, luxury, softness, stillness, the hint of royalty with the lioncels, and the blue canopy: for the last time they are under Arthur’s protection. Malory comments at this point, as the Freynshhe booke seyth, the quene and sir Launcelot were togydirs. And whether they were abed other at other maner of disportis, me lyste nat thereof make no mencion, for love that tyme was nat as love ys nowadays.44

That his source—or, more accurately, his sources—were uninformative about the nature of the lovers’ occupation is simply untrue. Both Le Morte Arthure and La Mort le Roi Artu are explicit on this subject: Lancelot was in bed with Guenever. Malory is being disingenuous. The reason for his reticence is that Malory holds an idealized notion of what ‘love that tyme’ was like, and doesn’t want to ‘convey the wrong idea of how lovers were expected to behave in Arthur’s time.’45 White, who detested the ephemeral kind of love practiced in his own day quite as much as Malory detested the forms of fashionable love practiced in his own, makes no effort to reach behind Malolry for his master’s source. The result is that one is assured by both authors that love of nowadays is very inferior stuff, indeed, to that of yesteryear. White substitutes for Malory’s evasion a pastime for the lovers which, like their duet, is a companionable enough enterprise, but one which at least on first glance appears to be scarcely intimate: Lancelot brushes Guenever’s hair. His choice of pastime for the lovers is a seemingly decorous substitution for the kind of overtly sexual activity that is so obviously demanded by the circumstances. On the surface at least, it seems that, for a man who held himself to hate the Victorians, White certainly put himself to pains to select for his lovers an employment that equals for its highmindedness anything found in Tennyson. By comparison, William Morris’s ‘The Defence of Guenever’ is steamy stuff, indeed. And

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the hairbrushing itself, like the duet in Chapter 4, is reminiscent not so much of the Middle Ages as it is of Victorian England. Responding to White’s intense visualization of the scene, one sees summoned up before one not some medieval heroine but rather a composite woman evoked from the scores of long-haired beauties who haunt the gently melancholy canvases of Burne-Jones, Morris, and Rossetti, all of whose works White would cheerfully have consigned to hell for violation of his sacred Malory. Further, the hairbrushing is not so innocent a pastime as it first appears to be. Amusingly enough, the apparently decorous act of hairbrushing carries with it a certain symbolic suggestiveness. Though it is not so exalted in the hierarchy of sexual implication as, say, footwashing, hairbrushing has clearly Freudian overtones. The well-known Victorian preoccupation with hair—putting hair up, taking hair down, and, above all, brushing hair—was one of the sexually connotative but socially permissible pastimes allowed to be visible. The argument that White may not have been unaware of the sexual overtones implied by Lancelot and Guenever’s hairbrushing scene receives support when one recalls that, at the beginning of the chapter, Lancelot is described as wearing only a dressing gown and a kind of turban, beneath which he is naked. The reader is told that ‘he was ready for bed.’46 This is before he goes to see Guenever, and Lancelot’s sole attempt to dress after he is summoned to her bedchamber is to throw a mantle about him, which he takes off as soon as he enters her room. Now the hairbrushing, taken at face value, appears to be innocent enough, but the residual image of Lancelot naked beneath his dressing gown makes one believe that the hairdressing was, perhaps, simply a kind of sexual foreplay, ritualized by long tradition between the two lovers, which would have been succeeded, except for Mordred and Agravaine’s hammering at the door, by sexual activity of a more conventional sort. Besides, it seems unreasonable to think that Lancelot and Guenever would risk all, against Gareth’s warning, just so Lancelot could brush his mistress’s hair. Certainly Lancelot is fearless, but, in the scene with Gareth, he is aware of his clothing, and he is excited:

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‘Gareth, once when I was a young fellow a lady came skipping past me, chasing a peregrine which had snapped its creance. The trailing part of the creance got wound up in a tree, and the peregrine hung there at the top. The lady persuaded me to climb the tree, to get her hawk. I was never much of a climber. When I did get to the top, and had freed the hawk, the lady’s husband turned up in full armor and said he was going to chop my head off. All the hawk business had been a trap to get me out of my armour…I was in the tree in my shirt, without even a dagger.’47

Gareth doesn’t understand what Lancelot is getting at, and Lancelot explains to his young friend that the husband, who was a much better fighter than Agravaine, was dispatched without any problems. Gareth replies that he is confident that Lancelot can deal with Agravaine, but suppose Agravaine comes with an armed band of men? Lancelot scoffs at the idea, but Gareth is insistent. It is at this point in the story that ‘there was a scratch at the door, a gentle drumming. A mouse might have made it, but Lancelot’s eyes grew vague.’48 He leaves, forgetting his sword. (In Malory, Lancelot is less absentminded and more prudent; he takes his sword. Although he describes Elaine as ‘naked as a nedyll,’49 and Lancelot, when he climbs the tree, as having ‘put of all his clothis unto his shurte and his breche,’50 or when he visits the queen as dressed in ‘hys mantell,’51 Malory is in general not responsive to what people are wearing; ‘naked’ can mean simply that a man is not wearing armor.) In other words, Lancelot, naked beneath his dressing-gown, ‘ready for bed,’ his eyes growing vague, gives every appearance of a man love-smitten and ripe for passion. Now it seems to me that White, a master of the oblique narrative, is putting to use the same principles in this passage. He tells the reader nothing directly. But through hints and suggestions—Lancelot’s nakedness underneath his dressing gown, the vagueness of his eyes, his absent-mindedness, and the very symbolic nature of his hairbrushing with Guenever—he manages to imply a great deal and impart to the scene an atmosphere if not of sexuality, at least of sensuality. Natural good taste reinforces White’s natural hesitation. But this is beside the point. White, emotionally crippled, found that scenes of physical intimacy between man and woman were difficult if not impossible for him to describe, and he never tried. He could guess at them and, by virtue of his talent, hint and make suggestions. Thus it

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is that White’s art outstrips his personal disadvantages: no one reading these passages could deduce any more about the author than that he was, possibly, a bit Victorian about such matters, certainly not that he was never to have a satisfactory relationship with a woman. Judging from his attitudes in the journals, White would have taken the compliment to his art as a matter of course, but he would have denied vehemently that in any way he was like the Victorians whose works and attitudes he so much despised. Now it is as if one were walking along a cloister passageway; one sees the garden contained by the cloister arcades, groupings of archways and columns. One is aware of the garden scene only secondarily: one’s attention is held to the nearby texture of stone, the proportion of lineament and curve; what is beyond expands to fill the structure of the frame. That is Malory. With White, one is aware of the fidelity of the garden scene encompassed by the archway’s frame; one’s focus has been drawn out to the distant view comprehended in its proportion by the archway close up. White has supplied the scene in detail, the missing motivations. The particular scene in which Lancelot and Guenever are surprised by Mordred and Agravaine is justly famous in Malory. This is how he describes the setting: So sir Launcelot departed and toke hys swerde undir hys arme, and so he walked in hys mantell, that noble knyght, and put hymselff in grete jouparte. And so he past on tylle he cam to the quenys chambir, and so lyghtly he was had into the chambir.52

In Malory, the attention is on Lancelot, not Guenever. White has Lancelot leave his sword behind, a significant omission, implying as it does that Lancelot’s suspicions have not been raised. In Malory, Lancelot is warned by Bors; for purposes of heightened irony, White used Gareth. For similar reasons, it is Agravaine, not Collgrevaunce whom Lancelot slays inside the door, and whose armor he puts on. When, at last, Lancelot with Guenever’s assistance has armed himself in the dead Agravaine’s armor, ‘the old lady turned him to face the candles.’53

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Here again, the candle image is underscored, with all its attendant connotations of transiency and impermanence. The deliberate use of ‘the old lady’ to describe the queen heightens her regal figure into the stature of a symbol of the old age and decency which is soon to suffer by the sword and flame under the brutal dreams of Mordred. By the time of their siege at Joyous Gard, Guenever’s change of nature or temperament is almost complete. She can wait with patience now; the heyday in her blood is tamed, it’s humbled. By the time that Guenever turns to her lover with a face of composure and relief—the efficient and undramatic face which women achieve when they have nursing to do, or some other employment of efficiency.54

she has shown the reader another facet of her complex, and yet utterly believable character. This inner tranquility is of a piece with the lovers’ age, and with the winter scene set in Lancelot’s happy castle. Now Guenever has become in all save issue a mother; she has become the certain repository of comfort and solace, the source of calm to which Lancelot turns. In her sure sweetness, Guenever knows (as she has always known) that the moment is all that they have ever had, all they will ever have. But she is willing to return to Arthur. Guenever is a counterpart to Lancelot, with his vivid sense of sin and of self-blame. Lancelot is the wind-riven oak; Guenever, the bending willow: He could not bear it that she was allowing herself to be handed from one to another, no longer young, or that he was to lose her, or that he was not to lose her. Between men’s lives and their love and his old totems, he was left with nothing but shame. This she saw, and helped him with it also.... ‘There,’ she said, stroking his white hair. ‘Don’t listen to them. My Lancelot must stay in the castle, and there will be a happy ending.’55

In the great banishment scene depicted in Chapter 10, Lancelot and Guenever enter to the sound of trumpets. They wear robes of white and gold, and carry olive branches. The queen is ‘no longer young or lovely, [and] carried her olive branch ungracefully.’56 This disparagement, and a reference a few lines later to ‘her ridiculous olive branch, her clumsiness and silly clothes,’57 is obviously intended by White to evoke

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from the reader a feeling of pity for the queen who is now no longer young or lovely. But in one of the rare instances in TOAFK where his instinct leads him into error, White’s intention for Guenever to appear pathetic strikes a false note: Guenever, whatever unfortunate bizarries of dress or makeup she might have affected, would never have appeared ungraceful or silly. She is, after all, Arthur’s queen, and Lancelot’s sole love. The poignancy of her plight is assured, she needs no contrivance to make her more appealing; his envisionment of her sells short the character White was at such pains to create, and fractionally diminishes his achievement. Lancelot’s parting from Guenever is moving: ‘Well madam, it seems that we must part.’ He took her by the hand, led her to the middle of the room, translating her into his remembered lady. Something in his grip, in his step, in the fullness of his voice, made her bloom again—it was their last partnership—into the Rose of England. He lifted her to a crest of conquest which they had forgotten. As stately as a dance, the gargoyle took her to the centre. There, poising her flushing, the arch-stone of the realm, he made an end. It was the last time that Sir Lancelot, King Arthur, and Queen Guenever were to be together.58

Certainly, this is romantic stuff. Guenever likened to a rose, the Rose of England, awakens memories of other references to roses which occur throughout Knight and Candle; Arthur, who ‘adored his rose-petalled Guenever for her dash;’59 the idyllic year which Lancelot and Guenever spent together, when ‘the four seasons were coloured like the edge of a rose petal for them;’60 Arthur’s and Lancelot’s cross-purpose conversation in the rose-garden when Lancelot, on the verge of confessing his loveaffair to Arthur, ‘snapped off one of the roses, and was pinching the sepals;’61 Guenever, the ‘empty vessel, a shore without a sea,’ ‘gathered her rose-buds while she might, and the striking thing was that she only gathered two of them, which she kept always, and that those two were the best.’62 The rose image is a lovely one, for not only is there a vast tradition of rose symbolism in medieval literature, both with secular and religious connotation, but the reader brings to it also the thought of Guenever, connected inextricably with England—and majesty. Use

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of the rose image is a superb and economical device to focus attention on different aspects of the Lancelot-Guenever-Arthur entanglement. When, in Chapter 11, Guenever and her serving woman, Agnes, speak of Arthur and Lancelot, Agnes tells the Queen with unintentional irony: ‘Ah, these high and mighty matters, madam—they are beyond us poor women.’63 Indeed, the treachery of women brings about the fall of the kingdom. Often they act unconscious of the consequences of their actions. But, with White, the treachery of women is so much a part of their nature that it is even unremarkable: Elaine is no match in guile for Morgause, but she finds it easy to trick Lancelot twice. Both Mordred and Galahad are the issue of liaisons effected through trickery. When Guenever reflects upon Mordred, her thoughts on Morgause compose a commentary which is revelatory of White’s view of the two queens, the lioness and the panther: Guenever, the daughter of a king, is instinctively generous, headstrong, wilful, bold, sensitive, easily touched, sometimes compassionate—and barren; Morgause, the daughter of a king, is above all else selfish, and she is also capricious, calculating, indifferent to or at times luxuriating in the physical cruelty she creates—and she teems with progeny. Guenever will end her days on earth as an abbess, adored by her novices, imperious, enduring. Morgause has been murdered at the age of seventy by her lovesmitten son who discovered her with her lover in the rank sweat of an unseamed bed, and struck off her head. That Guenever is to achieve a stately and imperious old age is shown in her treatment of the mad, importunate Mordred, when she flares out at him: ‘Will you be so kind as to address me by my title, Mordred?’ ‘But certainly. I must apologize if I have been trespassing on Lancelot’s preserves.’ The sneer acted as a tonic. It raised her stature to the royal lady which she was, to a straight-backed dowager whose rheumatic fingers flashed with rings, who had ridden the world successfully for fifty years. ‘I believe,’ she said at once, ‘you would find some difficulty in doing that.’64

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Guenever’s stately old age is confirmed in Chapter 20 of Merlyn, where the reader is told that Lancelot arrives from France too late to help Arthur, and after he has seen to his burial and has attempted to pacify the country, he tries to find Guenever. She has taken the veil at Amesbury, saying that she wished to make her peace with God. Here the reader is given one last sight of the lovers: Guenever never cared for God. She was a good theologian, but that was all. The truth was that she was old and wise: she knew that Lancelot did care for God most passionately, that it was essential he should turn in that direction. So, for his sake, to make it easier for him, the great queen now renounced what she had fought for all her life, now set the example, and stood to her choice. She had stepped out of the picture.... Guenever became a worldly abbess. She ruled her convent efficiently, royally, with a sort of grand contempt. The little pupils of the school were brought up in the great tradition of nobility. They saw her walking in the grounds, upright, rigid, her fingers flashing with hard rings, her linen clean and fine and scented against the rules of her order. The novices worshipped her unanimously, with schoolgirl passions, and whispered about her past. She became a Grand Old Lady. When she died at last, her Lancelot came for the body, with his snow-white hair and wrinkled cheeks, to carry it to her husband’s grave. There, in the reputed grave, she was buried: a calm and regal face, nailed down and hidden in the earth. As for Lancelot, he became a hermit in earnest. With seven of his own knights as companions he entered a monastery near Glastonbury, and devoted his life to worship. Arthur, Guenever and Elaine were gone, but his ghostly love remained. He prayed for all of them twice a day, with all his never-beaten might, and lived in glad austerities apart from man. He even learned to distinguish birdsongs in the woods, and to have time for all the things which had been denied to him by Uncle Dap. He became an excellent gardener, and a reputed saint.65

White gives to the noble lovers, even as to Arthur, a fitting end. The ideals by which he was so long sustained buoyed White and demanded of him that he do well by his—and Malory’s—favorite, Lancelot. But without Arthur, the affair between Lancelot and Guenever cannot be resumed. To pick up their relationship is to do blasphemy to Arthur’s memory. Lancelot and Guenever each loved Arthur deeply;

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both are shown to be essentially honorable people. Resumption of the affair would be an indecency. The reader’s last views of the lovers—Guenever, idolized by her young novices, Lancelot as a hermit—are fully convincing. They have endured, they have outlasted the heyday in their blood. If the sexual uproar has cooled, there is now a quiet acceptance and kindness to one another, virtues that White thought so much of that he was generally careful to attribute them only to animals. By rights, it ought to be desperately difficult to write touchingly and convincingly about a love affair in which the participants have white hair; the idea is fraught with disastrous possibilities. But White handles the Lancelot-Guenever affair with tact and consummate mastery. He is at home with older people. And Guenever, his full-blown creation, is fortunately barren; she was difficult enough for him to envision in the first place—Guenever as a mother would have added immeasurably to his task. Though she is barren, and may be no true theologian, Guenever is every inch a Christian queen, and has sense enough of life to know that of it, and love, she has had the best. White did nobly by Arthur’s queen; his ‘angry affection’ in the event proved to be a generous love.

From the Journals of T.H. White Printed by kind permission of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Conclusion

A

s the focus of this book has been not only on White’s women, but on White himself, I would be remiss were I to fail to examine the character with whom White most identified, Lancelot. Much of White’s personality can be found in Lancelot and his relationships to the women in TOAFK. Further, the history of the composition of Knight and Merlyn, like that of Witch and Queen, reveals much about White’s feelings toward women as well as his ability as a superb craftsman to overcome his limitations. Indeed, examination of White’s life during the time of his writing casts extraordinary illumination on his powers of creation, and the psychological pressures under which he wrote. The whole epic of TOAFK belongs, naturally enough, to Arthur. But it is among White’s greatest accomplishments that his subordinate characters are often realized with a brilliance which throws them into competition with the main characters. Merlyn, although an important character, is subordinate to Arthur in the hierarchy of importance; but when he leaves the pages of TOAFK, in Queen, the remaining books suffer. When one looks at each of the constituent volumes, one sees that, considered individually, each is concerned with other people: Sword is the young Wart’s (with a generous assistance from Merlyn); Queen is Morgause’s; Knight is Lancelot’s and Guenever’s. But Candle, which by rights should belong to Arthur alone, both individually and as the series hero, is less his than one might expect. Mordred’s crooked shape throws a grotesque shadow across its pages. The evil that Mordred embodies is real and palpable; his oncoming madness does not serve to mitigate his depravity in the reader’s mind. The revelation (not made until Candle) of Arthur’s attempt on Mordred’s life when the bastard was but yet a baby, is singularly ineffective in summoning the reader’s sympathy for Mordred’s plans for revenge; one

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feels only admiration for Arthur when the King makes Lancelot promise him not to kill Mordred. But even if one is unmoved by the story of Arthur trying to kill Mordred, one recognizes instinctively the sufficiency of Mordred’s hatred on the basis of a primitive level of father and son struggle. It makes sense: the young, birthrightless son and the wise old king. It is an archetypal contest. Mordred, of course, has his own terrible experiences at his mother’s hands, which confirm him in his intention to seek revenge, but the contest between father and son operates exclusively of these; they are merely additional reasons for Mordred to quest for his father’s downfall. And behind Morgause’s ghost-shape, there is the shadowy flitting figure for the Orkney queen’s fleshly inspiration—White’s own mother, Constance White. Had not White’s own feelings toward his mother and the experiences of his own childhood been so passionately at rip-tide, the whole epic of TOAFK would have been much diminished. Candle would have been a grave disappointment, and TOAFK would have been incalculably a weaker novel. It is due in significant measure to Constance White that the book has impact. history of the composition The first mention of The Sword in the Stone suggests that the book was almost a fait accompli. In a letter of 5 October 19371 to the noted falconer J.G. Mavrogordato White writes, ‘I have to come up to Wen some time in the near future to hand over a manuscript to my publisher.’ Three months later in a letter to L.J. Potts 14 January 1938 one learns more about Sword’s genesis: I have £41 in the bank. No book has been published since the last you heard of [England Have My Bones]—but there is one in the press. I think it is one of my better books, so probably nobody else will. It is a preface to Malory. Do you remember I once wrote a thesis on the Morte d’Arthur? Naturally I did not read Malory when writing the thesis on him, but one night last autumn I got desperate among my books and picked him up in lack of anything else. Then I was thrilled and astonished to find (a) that the thing was a perfect tragedy, with a beginning, a middle and an end implicit in the beginning, and (b) that the characters were real people with recognizable reactions which could be forecast. Anyway, I somehow started writing a book. It is not a satire. Indeed, I am afraid it is rather

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warm-hearted—mainly about birds and beasts. It seems impossible to determine whether it is for grown-ups or children. It is more or less a kind of wish-fulfillment of the things I should like to have happen to me when I was a boy. ... Writing books is a heartbreaking job. When I write a good one it is too good for the public and I starve, when a bad one you and Mary are rude about it. This Sword in the Stone (forgive my reverting to it—I have nobody to tell things to) may fail financially through being too good for the swine. It has (I fear) its swinish Milne-ish parts (but, my God, I’d gladly be a Milne for the Milne money) but it is packed with accurate historical knowledge and good allusive criticism of chivalry (I made the fox-hunting comparison with some glee) which nobody but you will notice.2

The ‘one night last autumn’ when White reached for his copy of Malory I take to refer to the autumn of 1936, not 1937, after he had left his teaching post at Stowe and was living in the gamekeeper’s cottage on the estate of Stowe Ridings. A strict construction on White’s words would mean that he had been inspired by the Arthur material, had written Sword, submitted it and had it accepted for publication, all within the space of a few months. Even for a writer of White’s prodigious industry, that would have been an insurmountable task. The thesis on Malory which White mentions in his letter to Potts was an essay submitted for the English Tripos while he was a student at Cambridge in 1927. According to Warner: ‘Mr. Henn (a fellow of St. Catharine’s College) to whom he showed it, remembers it as “wild, violent, very funny; clearly the germ of The Sword in the Stone.”’3 Reference to the Malory essay without being able to see the original is tantalizing, for it would be informative to inspect the framework on which White would later construct Sword. This material has not been found among White’s papers, and it is virtually certain that it has been lost.4 White’s own attitude toward his Malory essay (‘Naturally I did not read Malory when writing the thesis on him’) is like that of any other young writer not so confident of his ability that he can face with perfect calm a close inspection of his early efforts. Even though White is sour in his acknowledgment of the Malory essay, this mention of it

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shows that he had at least had his attention directed toward Malory as early as 1927.5 He was optimistic about Sword, and his optimism was not misplaced. In August, 1938,6 White learned that Sword had been selected by the American Book of the Month Club. As the history of Queen has already been discussed (for it is inextricably linked to the character of Morgause), I now pass on to the third book of TOAFK, Knight. In Knight the various strands of the unified tragedy which White saw in Malory—the tragedy that will culminate in Candle—first begin to be gathered together. In Knight, White interlaces the sin of Arthur (in the person of Mordred), the quarreling Orkney faction, the murders of Pellinore, Lamorak, and Morgause, the LancelotGuenever affair, the Grail Quest, the growing weariness of the King, and his noble desire to formulate the primacy of Justice. The book ends in a final efflorescence of chivalry. White had been living in Ireland since February of 1939, when he had come over from England to go fishing with David Garnett. He had made the trip uncomfortably, travelling below-decks with Brownie, who had been refused cabin-space. After a brief and unsuccessful foray on the Dee, he and Garnett tried fishing the Boyne, where Garnett landed a salmon in the first few minutes. White took nothing and decided to stay on in Ireland. Ray (Mrs. David) Garnett found an eighteenth-century farmhouse, Doolistown, near Trim, in County Meath, which was to be White’s home for the next six years as a boarder with Lena and Paddy McDonagh. White was back in England for less than a week in May, 1939, when he took over the typescript of Witch to Collins, picked up his car and returned to Ireland on the Holyhead boat. In June, 1939, flush with his success with The Sword in the Stone, White drove up into County Mayo, where he looked for grouse or fishing lodges to rent. In the Erris region between Ballina and the sea he found Sheskin lodge and was struck by the notion of taking it for August or September grouse shooting. He then determined to invite Garnett and his family over as part of a large houseparty. Dissuaded by the owners from taking the lodge for August, White settled on September. The choice was to prove disastrous.

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It was to be a melancholy autumn for White, personally, as it was a melancholy autumn for the western world. War was imminent, and by 29 August 1939 he was seeing his houseparty falling to pieces as ‘telegrams from faltering war-guests [were] beginning to arrive.’7 Garnett was to show up on 30 August and his family on 1 September. It was a classic case of a friendship being predicated mainly on correspondence. The two men spent an uncomfortable day together waiting for Ray and the children to arrive. Each man made an effort but each had his own fears. White was seeing his cherished plans for his house-party go down the drain, and Garnett, besides the expectation of receiving from the Air Ministry a telegram recalling him to London, held to himself the bitter, lonely knowledge that his wife was suffering from incurable cancer. On the morning of 1 September, in a hotel in Belmullet, the two men heard that Germany was at war with Poland. White’s pleasure in Garnett’s long-anticipated visit was deteriorating under the threat of global conflict: In Poland living souls are being blown to atoms. The English wireless has fled from London to Scotland: it talks and talks about regulations for calling people up and hiding lights and buying food. On it Chamberlain talks of war. Meanwhile we, in our outpost of the spirit with nothing but heather to see, have no longer the heart to fly the hawks at all. They get fed listlessly at the block once more, and the wireless finally packs up. Why mention the hawks, or ourselves, or anything, or trouble to make these marks with ink?8

White and Garnett passed a few miserable days together. The hawking went all wrong and midges drove them out of the water when they went fishing. On the evening of 9 September, feeling the strain of being without news of the war, Garnett and his wife drove into Crossmolina, bought a portable radio, and heard that England and Germany were now at war. When they returned to Sheskin, there was a telegram from the Air Ministry, and Garnett departed for London the next morning. White was left with Garnett’s wife and children for the next ten days. It was a trying time. Part of White’s journal entry for 21 September 1939 illuminates some of the problems: White, sick, crotchety, disconsolate about being left with the wife and children of a man who was going

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back to take his part in the war, could have been at best an irascible host, at worst, almost irrational: Another way they bothered me was by bothering about the war. Nothing they could do would have any effect on it, but they would go on. And William such a solemn little boy. Ray said: ‘He is shy. Don’t be unkind to him. He is not so ungracious as he seems. It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.’ But I can’t stand shy people. Let them give over their self-indulgence and stop being shy. It is gross egoism. I did. And Ray’s shyness. Behind it all an uncompromising, passionate, weak mania for truth. Strange people. I really like Ray very much. But more in small doses. It is like living with Mrs. Be-Done-ByAs-You-Did. She is as ferocious to herself. This bottling up so bad. A week ago she suddenly had convulsions after dinner, and I had to drive for the doctor. She is trying to shield both her children and her husband from a world where her Truth God does not really reign, and she tries to be Spartan about it. The bore is that she has a bias for these wretched children. It is the one thing in which she is not true. She would kill me if she knew I knew this.9

But in a burst of characteristic magnanimity, White made this addition to his journal, reminiscent so much of his credit-and-debit appraisals of Lancelot, Guenever, and Elaine: This is an absolutely untrue picture of her, for it leaves out the one essential thing about her, which is that she is dying of cancer. Take this in and she is the greatest hero in the world.10

In any event, more than Ray Garnett’s courage afforded White a chance to recognize her as a rare person. For while they were together at Sheskin she had made the comment which White was to use in Knight: ‘It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.’11 This remark found root in the receptive soil of White’s own mother-maimed spirit. Ray Garnett’s observation, coupled with White’s awareness that Lancelot chose for himself the name The Ill-Made Knight, made Lancelot into a real person, not a literary character. White remained behind at Sheskin alone, living on grouse and wine, and reading from a book propped up against a candle. White drove back to Doolistown on 1 October 1939, and his long journal entry for 4 October in which he examined the characters of Lancelot, Guenever, and Elaine, shows clearly that Knight had been much on his mind. In November, he returned to County Mayo to the secluded

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village of Belmullet, where he hoped to have good sport goose-shooting. That winter of 1939–40 saw White extraordinarily busy, writing much good poetry, coming to grips with ‘the Gael,’ spending some lonely days on the deserted island of Inniskea, shooting, and half in love with the notion of embracing Roman Catholicism. He was incredibly productive: his diary shows that he had finished writing Knight by June. White drove back to Doolistown at Easter, when he was supposed to be baptised by a priest in Trim. The baptism did not take place. Ray Garnett died on Easter Sunday, and the last words that she was able to write were to White. Her letter is pasted in White’s journal. Later he wrote beneath the envelope: I still think of her more than any other woman. She is as real to me now as if she were alive, and I think she will be till I die. I still puzzle about things she said, regret things that I said, and see her standing, with bare feet on the bog, her skirts tucked up, back from some private expedition. She is the only woman I have never condescended to. I have only four times in my life met my superiors, and three of them were men.12

There is something touching yet frightening about the admission that Ray Garnett was the only woman to whom White never condescended and about the further confidence that, of the four superiors he had met in his life, three were men. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity, and this evidence of frankness is touching. What is frightening is the utter removal one senses, the great gulf that existed between White and women. ‘If there are so many records of conversions, why are there none of the opposite?’ White asked himself in his diary entry for 18 August 1940. By the late fall of 1940 his enthusiasm for the Gael is beginning to wane. In his journal there is no longer quite the same delight over discovery of things Irish, nor does he further advance his claim to having Irish blood—a claim which later will be repudiated before being proven groundless. His flirtation with the Roman church has ended and, with it, the evenings spent reciting the rosary in the cosy warmth of Mrs. McDonagh’s parlor. He is no longer inspired to lengthy exegesis of the evangelists. He has heard no cultured English voices in several months. The country wit and wisdom he so much admires is no longer

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set down verbatim. He has just returned from Belmullet on the remote coast of County Mayo, where he has finished writing Knight. He also fished, shot geese, hawked, suffered through drinking fits and bouts of depression when he would lock himself into his hotel room in fear of the I.R.A. For the next twenty-three years, he will be remembered with affection and distrust, recalled as a bit of a clown by some, and by others as a man clearly at the mercies of his own demons. He was not asked to return to a formation of the local militia, and he was regarded with suspicion by some Belmullet locals as a possible English spy who kept secret maps under the ‘spatterdashes’ he had made for Brownie to wear in wet weather. By November of 1940, he was back with the McDonaghs at Doolistown, depending on the wireless for his knowledge of the war. He had hidden his gold hunter under the floorboard of his bedroom. Brownie was sleeping on the bed. More than ever, he committed himself to his journal, and one is made almost embarrassingly aware of the riptide of conflicting pressures that engulfed him. He saw the war as stupid and horrible. He regarded Churchill as a hypocrite. His own sense of impotence grew at seeing his attempts to join England so casually dismissed. Ireland will feel the savagery of White’s contempt. The ardent suitor of enthusiasms is most unhappy when he is forced to remain at the scene of his betrayal. Within a year and a half, White will be writing, ‘The Irish really are a foul race, and that’s all there is to be said about it.’13 Candle had already been written as a play—and had been turned down. After White went back to Doolistown on 1 October 1940, he set about to write it as the culminating volume of the tetralogy. The epic of Arthur had occupied White’s mind almost continuously since that fall night in 1936 when he had been living in the lamplit gamekeeper’s cottage at Stowe Ridings, and had reached down from the shelf (for lack of anything better to read) his old copy of the Strachey Malory. For those four intervening years White had lived with, spoken to, eaten with, slept with, fought with, and loved all those splendid but frequently insubstantial or enigmatic men and women who crowd the pages of Malory. As Malory’s literary pursuivant, White had given those shadowy men and women substance and had explained their

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motivations. He had made their actions understandable and touching on universal human experience. The price White paid for his fidelity to their cause was loneliness. And now, with completion of Candle, he would be finished with Arthur. On 21 October 1939, his journal entry forecast this eventuality: ‘If I contrive to finish Arthur at all, I shall have used up all my self in giving self to him!’ By a curious twist of fate, the tortured chronicler of knightly valor was to be prevented from taking part in the greatest wholesale warfare the world had ever known. Indeed, one feels that this repudiation of his talents contributed in no little measure to White’s developed view that the epic of Arthur was anti-war in its theme. His brilliant, inventive mind had given himself in Sword a childhood of wish-fulfillment, womanless, with a genius for a mentor and the whole Castle Sauvage in which to roam and play. Now that he was approaching the last pages of TOAFK, he realized that he was about to be bereaved. What would intrude upon his consciousness was what already intruded, even in Doolistown: the inescapable awareness of the war, the knowledge of the suffering and deprivation of his fellow Englishmen, and the knowledge that he was too old to serve, and, in any case, was not needed. What more natural than to think of prolonging his association with Arthur? By keeping on with Arthur—writing a fifth book—White could extend his dream-world. He could graft on to his aged hero’s heart, as if by some kind of sympathetic magic, the same doubts and fears that he himself was experiencing. In his lonely bedroom, he would listen to the wireless’s popular wartime songs, concerned with killing and copulation and, to his horror, he would feel his mouth stretching wide with unconscious mimicry of their debased lyrics, with involuntary approval of their mawkish sentiments. Nor could White in justice to himself find solace any longer in the Catholic Church; his efforts to obtain instruction with a view to baptism had been abandoned; abandoned, too, was any notion he might once have entertained of becoming a priest himself.

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While he had Arthur to finish, White had a paramount cause to serve. With Arthur finished, White would no longer be able to ignore the direction of his responsibility; his conscience, inculcated with the old Anglo-Indian values of the professional civil servant, would prompt him to make redoubled efforts to join the war effort. (Success in this endeavor would mean, of course, that he would have to leave his beloved Brownie in Ireland, and this was a further anguish in his heart.) But if he were able to chronicle Arthur over a fifth book—why then his terms of service would be extended! And he would have the chance to return to that world he had grown to know and love so well. And if he did write a fifth Arthur book, why not inflict upon Arthur— who, after all, had had a pretty easy time of it, besides his problems with Guenever and the Round Table—some of the same debilitating doubts about mankind and hatred of war that crowded the pages of White’s own journals? Enumerate arguments and marshal facts; transfer to the minds of the animals, those delightful creatures of invention in whose company author and hero both felt relaxed, the fruits of White’s naturalist labors! For a fifth book, with the animals, would echo Sword, awaken resonance with its astounding success, and recreate that happy time. It is the spring of 1942. White walks out to the bog. It is a bright windy fall day. Brownie romps by his side. Behind him is the house; inside is Mrs. McDonagh with her well-meant but maddening concern with the church. Paddy, her husband, has difficulty in restraining his awe at a camera. White thinks eyes are peeping out at him from bushes, from clumps of trees. He has recently started to conduct experiments in the bog with different colonies of ants. He wants to see if they will wage war on their own species. He has his notebook, carefully written in several colors of inks; the names for each ant-bed are listed by Greek letters. White is very serious. He gets down on his knees, and peers at the colony. It is his microcosm. On 14 November 1940, White entrusts his thoughts about a fifth volume to his journal. He has found an answer to his predicament, a method by which he can prolong his association with the once and future king: Pendragon can still be saved, and elevated into a superb success, by altering the last part of Book 4, and taking Arthur back to his animals.

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The legend of his going underground at the end, into the badger’s sett, where badger, hedgehog, snake, pike (stuffed in case) and all the rest of them can be waiting to talk it over with him. Now, with Merlyn, they must discuss war from the naturalist’s point of view, as I have been doing in this diary lately. They must decide to talk thoroughly over, during Arthur’s long retirement underground, the relation of Man to the other animals, in the hope of getting a new angle on his problem from this. Such, indeed, was Merlyn’s original objective in introducing him to the animals in the first place. Now what can we learn about the abolition of war from animals?14

The next step would be to place the idea before someone else. In fact two letters were sent, both dated 6 December 1940, one sent to his Cambridge mentor L.J. Potts, and the other to David Garnett. From the letter to L.J. Potts: The next volume is to be called The Candle in the Wind….It will end on the night before the last battle, with Arthur absolutely wretched. And after that I am going to add a new 5th volume, in which Arthur rejoins Merlyn underground (it turns out to be the badger’s sett of vol. 1) and the animals come back again, mainly ants and wild geese. Don’t squirm. The inspiration is godsent. You see, I have suddenly discovered that (1) the central theme of Morte d’Arthur is to find an antidote to war, (2) that the best way to examine the politics of man is to observe him, with Aristotle, as a political animal....So to put my ‘moral’ across (but I shan’t state it), I shall have the marvellous opportunity of bringing the wheel full circle, and ending on an animal note like the one I began on. This will turn my completed epic into a perfect fruit, ‘rounded off and bright and done.’15

No more able to stand on its own as an independent section of TOAFK than Candle, with its fast pace and clever scenes, Merlyn lacks the sense of involvement and interlacing of character and incident with the original published trilogy that could have made it an organic part of the whole epic. The evidence suggests that White knew this. By the time that he sent off the whole package of TOAFK, in November 1941—all five volumes—almost a year had passed. ‘To give weight to his discovery by making it seem less sudden,’ writes Warner in her introduction to Merlyn, ‘White incorporated new material into the already published three volumes.’16

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White must have known sometime in this year that Collins was almost certain to prove unreceptive to the idea of publishing a five-fold Arthur in wartime, for Garnett indicates17 that, as early as December 1940, he was undertaking negotiations with Jonathan Cape at White’s behest.18 If this is what it appears to be, then White had already anticipated Collins’s response, which came on 26 November 1941: I am not quite sure from your letter what you want us to do, but it rather seems as if your idea was that we should publish one long new book, to include the two new installments of the story and the revised scripts of the three books already published. As to whether this would be advisable, requires a great deal of thought.19

White’s reaction to this letter, according to Warner, was to suppose that Collins’s intention was to publish Candle and Merlyn by themselves, and leave the first three volumes as they stood. Perhaps, if he had already been negotiating successfully with Cape, White simply chose to put this construction on Collins’s words, and force him to a show-down, at which point he would feel entitled to change publishers. He answered Collins on 8 December 1941, ‘There is nothing I would like to do less, Billy, than to leave the house of Collins.’20 But the extensive rewriting of the first three volumes bothered Collins and, as for Merlyn, he quoted in his reply to White from the reader’s report: The introduction of the animals in the last book suggests The Sword in the Stone, but the purpose is sadly different. White has changed into a political moralist. Fun and fancy have abdicated in favour of a purpose. Nor do I see what can be done about it, if the author feels that way.21

During the ensuing bargaining between Collins, Cape, and White, which extended over a period of several months, Merlyn gradually seemed to lose its importance as the final volume of TOAFK, and eventually faded from consideration. It was White’s habit to make numerous corrections to proof-sheets ‘without which [he could] never properly pull a book together’22 and, in the circumstances, his request to be afforded proof-sheets of Merlyn went unnoticed. Collins ended up keeping the first three books; Cape took on White’s new books—but not Candle or Merlyn. The publication of TOAFK—as a tetralogy—was delayed until 1958, when it was published by Collins and then by the Reprint Society in

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England, and by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in the United States. Perhaps White recognized the justice of the Collins’s reader’s report, or, perhaps, since he had incorporated much of the anti-war discourse contained in Merlyn into his treatise ‘The Insolence of Man,’ he was no longer enthusiastic over Merlyn’s inclusion in the final TOAFK; in either event, White seems to have made no further effort to see it published. Merlyn remained, until 1977, what Warner so felicitously described as a ‘war casualty.’ white and lancelot ‘The fellow’s character I understand already: it is my own.’23 In his letter of 28 October 1936 to Garnett, White was referring to Sir Walter Raleigh, about whom he was thinking of writing a play. But, as Warner points out,24 he could just as well have been speaking of himself and Lancelot. A friend of White’s early days, John Moore, agreed: ‘He was a self-tormented person and I imagine he saw himself very much as Lancelot in The Ill-Made Knight.’25 If indeed White saw himself as Lancelot, there are some significant hints about Lancelot that might be applicable to White himself. The title of the book is itself helpful in providing a lead. In Malory, after roaming mad for two years, then being received in King Pelles’s court, Lancelot represents himself as ‘Le Shyvalere Ill Mafeete,’ which he interprets to Sir Castor, who questions him about his identity, as meaning ‘the knyght that hath trespassed.’26 The name must have intrigued White for, in Knight, he devotes several lines to possible explications of it. Elaine comments: ‘The Chevalier Mal Fet. What a romantic name! What does it mean?’ ‘You could make it mean several things. The Ugly Knight would be one meaning, or the Knight Who Has Done Wrong.’ He did not tell her that it could also mean the Ill-Starred Knight—the Knight with a Curse on Him.27

The implications suggested by ‘Le Shyvalere Ill Mafeete’ are many, and these, coupled with Ray Garnett’s remark, provide the basis for Lancelot’s character in Knight: a man very much aware of his spiritual failings, full of unspecified blame, physically ugly, and, contradictorily, with a kind of arrogance as well.

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The clue to Lancelot’s character hinted at by his self-appraisal as ‘Le Shyvalere Ill Mafeete’ in Malory must have suggested at once to White, himself morbidly aware of his own freight of self-recrimination, that here was a man with a lively sense of shame, of self-blame, of having done wrong, or of laboring through life under a curse. White needed no more than the lightest breath of intimation to attribute motivation, and ‘Le Shyvalere Ill Mafeete’ was more than enough. It is tantalizing to speculate that, without further attribution given in Malory as to the source of Lancelot’s self-blame, White would have been tempted to assign the cursing to Elaine, Lancelot’s mother. But White had already in Queen given mothers a pretty thorough goingover, and could not without fear of violating the fabric of the whole novel hold Elaine at fault. As it is, of course, Elaine’s presence in Knight is insubstantial. The reader never really sees her with her son, nor are they ever shown in conversation. Ready to see Lancelot as full of self-blame and full of shame, but unable to assign a cause for it, at least to the source that would naturally spring quickest to his mind, White was preternaturally susceptible to Ray Garnett’s comment that ‘it is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.’ If he could hide the origin of Lancelot’s blame far enough in the past that Lancelot could not recall it, then this assignment of blame would not have to be made in any particular fashion. It was a reasonable choice, as White himself had cause to know. After all, White had undergone some form of psychoanalysis as early as 193528 and must have been aware of the theories of the subconscious mind locking in all kinds of recollections from a time when a child was presumably too young to remember anything. His autobiographical fragment certainly says nothing to negate this view and, in a diary entry of 1946 dealing with his dream summaries, he wrote, ‘part of this may have an actual reminiscence of some quarrel in the nursery before I could walk.’29 There would therefore be nothing illogical or unpersuasive about not assigning a cause for Lancelot’s self-blame, especially since the most attractive source of it, Elaine (Lancelot’s mother), would have duplicated his account of Morgause in Queen. Besides, White found various hints in Malory. In his copy of the Strachey Malory, when a sick knight is healed by the Sankgreal and Lancelot remains asleep nearby, Lancelot’s

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squire, in answer to the healed knight’s question as to why Lancelot was asleep, tells him that Lancelot dwells in some deadly sin whereof he was never confessed.30 In the next chapter, Lancelot, now awake, grieves over his misfortune in being unable to achieve the holiness of the Grail and says that he sees and understands that ‘his old sin hinders him and shames him.’31 White comments, ‘I think this was likely, and that the sin was not Guenever, but something of much longer standing.’ But later, when Lancelot has made his confession, White’s notation reads: ‘So the old sin was Guenever.’ One can almost sense his disappointment in this discovery, and in writing Knight White did indeed attribute the attractiveness of old sin and self-blame to Lancelot’s spiritually-directed character with no source specified; the Guenever affair would be a later contribution to his sense of shame. On 4 October 1939, after he had returned to Doolistown from Sheskin, White got down to business with Knight, and wrote this appraisal of Lancelot in his Journal: What kind of person was Lancelot? I know about half the kind of person he was, because Malory contented himself with stating the obvious half. He was more interested in the plot than the characters, and, as soon as he had laid down the broad lines of the latter, he left it at that. Malory’s Lancelot is: 1. Intensely sensitive to moral issues. 2. Ambitious of true—not current—distinction. 3. Probably sadistic or he would not have taken such frightful care to be gentle. 4. Superstitious or totemistic or whatever the word is. He connects his martial luck with virginity, like the schoolboy who thinks he will only bowl well in the match tomorrow if he does not abuse himself today. 5. Fastidious, monogamous, serious. 6. Ferociously punitive to his own body. He denies it and slave-drives it. 7. Devoted to ‘honour,’ which he regards as keeping promises and ‘having a Word.’ He tries to be consistent.

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t.h. white’s troubled heart 8. Curiously tolerant of other people who do not follow his own standards. He was not shocked by the lady who was naked as a needle. 9. Not without a sense of humour. It was a good joke dressing up as Kay. And he often says amusing things. 10. Fond of being alone. 11. Humble about his athleticism: not false modesty. 12. Self-critical. Aware of some big lack in himself. What was it? 13. Subject to pity, cf. no. 3. 14. Emotional. He is the only person Mallory mentions as crying from relief. 15. Highly strung: subject to nervous breakdowns. 16. Yet practical. He ends by dealing with the Guenever situation pretty well. He is a good man to have with you in a tight corner. 17. Homosexual? Can a person be ambi-sexual—bisexual or whatever? His treatment of young boys like Gareth and Cote Male Tale is very tender and his feeling for Arthur profound. Yet I do so want not to have to write a ‘modern’ novel about him. I could only bring myself to mention this trait, if it is a trait, in the most oblique way. 18. Human. He firmly believes that for him it is a choice between God and Guenever, and he takes Guenever. He says: This is wrong and against my will, but I can’t help it. It seems to me that no 17 is the operative number in this list. What was the lack? On first inspection one would be inclined to link it up with no 17, but I don’t understand about bisexuality, so can’t write about it. There was definitely something ‘wrong’ with Lancelot, in the common sense, and this was what turned him into a genius. It is very troublesome. People he was like: 1. Lawrence of Arabia, 2. A nice captain of the cricket-xi, 3. Parnell, 4. Sir W Raleigh,

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5. Hamlet, 6. me, 7. Prince Rufant, 8. Montros, 9. Tony Ireland or Von Simm[...] or whatever, 10. Any mad man, 11. Adam.32

In the event, he was to give to Lancelot many of his own virtues—and his own flaws, as well. It is worth recalling that Malory liked Lancelot so much that he is at some pains to diminish Gawaine’s role as the most important knight in Arthur’s court; he gives prominence to the scene in which Gawaine cuts off the lady’s head and Malory treats Guenever in fairly rough fashion. The Sir Urre incident, whether or not Malory himself invented it, enabled [Malory] to show his favorite hero, Lancelot, at the height of his glory. Even though the miracle of the healing makes Lancelot weep, ‘as he had bene a chylde that had bene betyn,’ he is seen here ‘doing many noble dedis’ and ‘living in all that courte wyth grete nobeles and joy longe tymes.’ On the eve of the catastrophe which is to put an end to Arthurian knighthood, Lancelot’s greatness is thus emphasized once more.33

In the early pages of Knight, Lancelot is depicted as an ugly boy in the throes of hero-worship, savagely dedicated to the lonely work of making himself a knight worthy of his king. He is a boy with a disabling sense of his own unworthiness and of old sin. These attributes, the ugliness and unworthiness, and the sense of old sin, were themselves vital parts of White’s own self-appraisal. It is an explosive combination of qualities for Lancelot, who wants to become the best knight in the world. White’s Lancelot has a face ‘as ugly as a monster’s in the King’s menagerie’ or like a ‘an African ape.’34 The traditional view of Lancelot is that he was an extraordinarily handsome man. Ladies fell in love with him the moment they saw him. The beautiful Galahad was instantly recognizable as Lancelot’s son.

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Though in photographs White himself does not appear to have been an ugly man, there is some evidence to suggest that he may have thought of himself as ugly. His shamed reaction to the letter that his mother had written him from India when he was a child, rebuking him for his ‘sensual lips’ and advising him to hold them in (with his teeth if necessary), was to wear a beard and moustache through most of his adult life. Lancelot’s ugliness, besides revealing how White is likely to have regarded himself, also shows that Guenever possesses considerable intuition: not put off by Lancelot’s face, she goes right to the heart. She is a woman who is not attracted by mere surface beauty. It is worth noting that neither in the stage nor screen versions of TOAFK is Lancelot portrayed as ugly, and rightly so: it is far too outrageous a violation of dramatic convention to have an ugly Lancelot. The reader cannot be expected to sympathize with an ugly hero’s efforts to win the wife of a handsome king. It is hard to get close to Quasimodo and distasteful to think of him enjoying a carnal relationship with Esmeralda. If White’s Lancelot is ugly and full of unspecified blame, he also boasts, contradictorily, a sort of fundamental arrogance that he will be able to hold Guenever in high regard without being overwhelmed by her rank and personality. It would have been more plausible if, like a good many men burdened with self-doubt, White’s Lancelot would have preferred instead of the lovely, imperious Guenever, a loyal innocent like Elaine. Much is made of the close relationship between the unfledged knights serving as squires and pages, and the knights whom they serve. This emphasis, following upon the revelation of Lancelot’s hero-worship for Arthur, underlies White’s continuing preoccupation with youth and age, innocence and experience, naivete and wisdom, and the depiction of the ideal kind of life far from women. In reading this passage, a variation of the usual White senex-puer relationship, which describes in idealized terms the bond between experienced and knowledgeable knights and their young, innocent squires, the reader finds it well-nigh impossible not to recognize an approving undercurrent of implied homosexuality, for all of White’s skill in robbing the subject of possible repugnance.

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When White mentions that Lancelot ‘wanted one other thing which was still possible in those days’35—the ability to perform a miracle—the relevance of the phrase ‘in those days’ is that, even as Malory himself despaired of the world in which he lived, and envisioned an idealized time in the past for the setting of his stories, so too does White. He is writing in a world in which millions of people are losing their lives while he, torn by conflicting passions, remains in Ireland. ‘In those days’ goes far to explain White’s love for the past and contempt for the present, for ‘in those days’ such love of man for man, so clean and perfect, was possible and admirable, and the hope of performing a miracle was a laudable ambition, capable of fulfillment. In the armory at Benwick, Uncle Dap is given to outbursts of temper when he teaches Lancelot. White, in one of his magnificent descriptions of cluttered rooms (Merlyn’s cottage in Sword and the Combination Room in Merlyn are others), tells the reader that ‘on the desk there were splattering quill pens, blotting sand, sticks for beating Lancelot.’36 Lancelot’s reaction to being beaten and White’s comment are interesting: Nobody can be a maestro without being subject to these excitements, so Lancelot seldom minded when he got his face slapped…Sometimes Uncle Dap was tantalized into beating him, but he bore that also. In those days they did.37

Here is another of White’s ambiguities. On the one hand, White seems to approve of the rigors of a public school education, including corporal punishment. On the other hand, one knows of his own melancholy experiences at Cheltenham, experiences which may have done much either to commence or confirm his tendencies toward homosexuality and sadism. ‘In those days’ in this context is plainly ironic, for they must have been bad old days, rather than good ones, when boys were beaten. This is the same kind of ambiguity that shows up earlier when Arthur speaks to Merlyn about the glories of chivalry and Merlyn explains to Arthur about the horrors of war. Often with White there is a fascination with things that are abhorrent to a civilized sensibility. The gloss that White gives the reader on Lancelot’s character is fascinating, not only for the light which it sheds on Lancelot, but for the resonances it awakens from the Garnett introduction to the White-

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Garnett letters, where Garnett spoke of his conversation with White in 1962: For one thing, he liked to hurt people. It was for the strange reason that he was cruel, that the poor fellow never killed a man who asked for mercy, or committed a cruel action which he could have prevented. One reason why he fell in love with Guenever was because the first thing he had done was to hurt her. He might never have noticed her as a person, if he had not seen the pain in her eyes.38

After Lancelot refuses to kill the knight who has slain his wife, he feels ‘cruelty and cowardice, the things which made him brave and kind.’39 This is simply one more instance of the curious awareness of pain that was so much a part of White’s own character, and which is so much in evidence in Queen, which he now makes a part of Lancelot’s with so much effect. One may legitimately ask if there is not some part of Lancelot’s attitude toward Guenever—his strong spiritual side—that is, when all is said and done, the attitude of a sadist who, inviting love, must, once it is offered, spurn it. When Lancelot returns to defend Guenever in the Poisoned Apple incident, White speaks of the ‘Eternal Quadrangle,’ in which Arthur is never mentioned by name. The pull of God and Guenever on Lancelot are, by White’s analogy to Jane and Janet, made both similar—and feminine. Perhaps there was nothing incongruous to White about the simile. Perhaps his religious sensibilities were so acute that he did indeed think of God in terms of a love affair. Perhaps White thought of God as exerting an almost sexual attraction on Lancelot. A few pages earlier, White writes of Lancelot: This knight’s trouble from his childhood—which he never completely grew out of—was that for him God was a real person. He was not an abstraction who punished you if you were wicked or rewarded you if you were good, but a real person like Guenever, or like Arthur, or like anybody else. Of course he felt that God was better than Guenever or Arthur, but the point was that he was personal. Lancelot had a definite idea of what he looked like and how he felt—and he was somehow in love with this Person.40

White tells the reader in several places in Knight about Lancelot’s proclivities toward hero-worship. By putting Lancelot’s relationship

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with God and Guenever on almost this footing, and pointing out occasionally Lancelot’s interest in the younger knights, is White not indeed not-so-subtly writing the ‘modern novel’ he swore not to write in his 4 October 1939 appraisal of Lancelot’s character, in which he considered the possibility of Lancelot’s being homosexual, and professed that if he did bring himself to mention the trait, it would have to be in the most ‘oblique’ way? Perhaps it is this obliquity that informs White’s construction of the ‘Eternal Quadrangle’ and puts God and Guenever on equal footing, so tellingly and convincingly. In a letter written to Elizabeth Otis and Chase Horton, dated 26 April 1957, John Steinbeck discusses the character of Lancelot. Although he is primarily interested in what he supposes to have been Malory’s envisionment of Lancelot, Steinbeck’s discussion may make a great deal of sense about White’s own attitudes toward Lancelot as well: Why did Lancelot fail in his quest and why did Galahad succeed? ... Malory has been studied as a translator, as a soldier, as a rebel, as a religious, as an expert in courtesy, as nearly everything you think of except one, and that is what he was—a novelist…A novelist not only puts down a story but he is the story. He is each one of the characters in a greater or a less degree. And because he is usually a moral man in intention and honest in his approach, he sets things down as truly as he can. He is limited by his experience, his knowledge, his observation and his feelings. A novel may be said to be the man who writes it. Now it is nearly always true that a novelist, perhaps unconsciously, identifies himself with one chief or central character in his novel. Into this character he puts not only what he thinks he is but what he hopes to be. We can call this spokesman the self-character…Now it seems to me that Malory’s selfcharacter would be Lancelot. All of the perfections he knew went into this character, all of the things of which he thought himself capable. But, being an honest man he found faults in himself, faults of vanity, faults of violence, faults even of disloyalty, and these would naturally find their way into his dream character…

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t.h. white’s troubled heart And now we come to the Grail, the Quest. I think it is true that any man, novelist or not, when he comes to maturity has a very deep sense that he will not win the Quest. He knows his failings, his shortcomings and particularly his memories of sins, sins of cruelty, or thoughtlessness, of disloyalty, of adultery, and these will not permit him to win the Grail. And so his self-character must suffer the same terrible sense of failure as his author. Lancelot could not see the Grail because of the faults and sins of Malory himself. He knows he has fallen short and all his excellence, his courage, his courtesy, in his own mind cannot balance his vices and errors, his stupidities. I think this happens to every man who has ever lived, but it is set down largely by novelists. But there is an answer ready to hand for every man and for novelists. The self-character cannot win the Quest, but his son can, his spotless son, the son of his seed and his blood who has his virtues but has not his faults. And so Galahad is able to win the Quest, the dear son, the unsoiled son, and because he is the seed of Lancelot and the seed of Malory, Malory-Lancelot has in a sense won the Quest and in his issue broken through to the glory which his own faults have forbidden him.41

Now Steinbeck is speaking as a novelist and not as a critic, but it seems to me that his critical intuitions make excellent sense—but only if one grants to his idea of a novelist (and of the novelist’s surrogate, Lancelot) a normal sense of what fatherhood means, imparts to him a conventional desire to see his child succeed and for both father and son to fit comfortably into a father-son relationship. Where does this leave White? There is no question that White deeply admired Lancelot. His notes in his Strachey Malory attest to that. Moreover, in ascribing motivations to Lancelot, White afforded him some of the same psychological disadvantages under which he himself labored: a crippling awareness of self-blame, largely unspecified in origin; a strong spiritual side to his nature; the respect and admiration (with occasional hints of latent homosexuality) that Lancelot feels for Arthur. White’s sense of identity with Lancelot and his admiration for him fulfill the first part of Steinbeck’s thesis admirably. But White goes further. He likes Lancelot so much that he supplies him with a childhood that is extremely close to the Arthur-ideal in Sword. King Ban, like Uther, is never presented. Lancelot’s mother is

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the merest shadow occupying space at the long table between Merlyn and his painted minx, Nimue. Lancelot leaves for Arthur’s court without warning or farewell to either his mother or father. The sole note of authority, love and wisdom—obviously adequate in White’s view—with which Lancelot is provided is his Uncle Dap, the Merlynfigure of Knight. Galahad, who is conceived through Elaine’s treachery, suffers under the disadvantage of being raised by his mother. White presents him unsympathetically, and Lancelot’s courteous indifference to him is understandable and forgivable. One cannot expect that Lancelot, so clearly the alter ego of White himself, will feel any of the pride in his son that Steinbeck’s comments presuppose. The reader is never allowed to feel close to Elaine, for all her pathetic and naive qualities. Lancelot, on the other hand, is made out to be the ‘nicest’ (in White’s words) of men, who has been ensnared by feminine trickery. The loss of Lancelot’s miracles is so shattering to the reader that it is out of the question that the son born of such betrayal will ever win a place in the reader’s heart. When Lancelot gives Elaine blood-money, the reader’s sensibilities are not offended—Elaine, one feels instinctively, is lucky to be offered even that sop. Fatherhood in TOAFK, while it is not treated with the undiluted malevolence White saves for motherhood, is pretty largely ignored. If White’s attitude toward motherhood is negative, his attitude toward fatherhood is, at best, neutral. In his journals and in his treatment of women, it is simple to see and correct to assign White’s bias toward women, and mothers, to his experience with his own mother, Constance White. But White’s virtual silence, by comparison, on the subject of Garrick White, his father, is worthy of attention. His memories of his father were often frightening ones: his father struggling with his mother over a loaded gun above White’s baby bed; his father photographed near a pile of dead tigers; his father setting White up in front of a toy castle with real pistol barrels in it, when White thought that he was to be killed. Nevertheless, by comparison with the frequency with which Constance White is spoken, mention of Garrick White is rare. As Warner states, referring to the long autobiographical passages White wrote in

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his 1941–42 journal, ‘Looking back, White bore his father no grudge and could find little mercy for his mother.’42 Certainly there are no striking instances of fatherhood in TOAFK. Arthur is left without a father. Ector is a broadly comic figure, if wellintentioned. King Lot is always absent from the out Isles. Ban of Benwick never appears. Probably the most sympathetically depicted father in Knight is Elaine’s father, King Pelles. The only positive relationship clearly approved of by White, which appears in Knight—or, for that matter, in TOAFK—is the one between the old wise man and the young, naive boy: the senex and the puer aeternus. Merlyn and the Wart, Uncle Dap and Lancelot, and, in a lesser way, St. Toirdealbhach and the Orkney children, are all manifestations of this relationship. The culminating example is, of course, King Arthur in Candle and his young page, Tom of Newbold Revell. One way in which White shows his dislike of Galahad and Mordred is by withholding from them any relationship of this kind. In the final chapter of Candle, the imagery of candlelight and wind is pronounced: ‘The same wind of sorrow whistled round the King’s pavilion at Salisbury. Inside there was a silent calm, after the riot of the open.’43 After the aged king has reflected on the state of mankind, he calls for his little page, a boy named Tom of Newbold Revell. It is White’s most affecting scene revealing the senex-puer aeternus relationship. His heart touched by the youngster’s hardiness and loyalty, King Arthur tells him his story, and ends with these words: ‘Thomas, my idea of those knights was a sort of a candle, like these ones here. I have carried it for many years with a hand to shield it from the wind. It has flickered often. I am giving you the candle now—you won’t let it out?’ ‘It will burn.’ ‘Good Tom. The light-bringer.’44

White’s journal for 15 November 1940: The Candle in the Wind must stop immediately after the boy Hugh— turn him into Tom—Malory? has been sent for the bishop.

Warner’s comment is supremely apropos:

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One stands outside the work of art, and all is clear. One sees the artist’s device, one imagines his private rapture of keeping it up his sleeve till the moment it is needed. In fact, it may just as well have occurred to him at the last moment; and then with a question-mark. ‘Turn him into Tom—Malory?’ It is a beautiful device, a farewelling obeisance to the old master who had conducted him for so long.45

The tent is now ‘empty, tawny and magnificent’ and ‘the wind wailed and the candles guttered.’46 White’s isolation from a normal father-son relationship, his distrust of women and his reservations about motherhood, his substitution for these of a senex-puer relationship, which carries with it a latent implication of homosexuality—all these conspired to handicap him when he wrote about the Grail Quest, at least in Steinbeck’s terms. His creation of Lancelot was so largely a personal identification and depends for its success so much on White’s own character that I cannot believe that any other novelist could have depicted him the same way and certainly not with an equal intensity. last view of white Distrust of human motives, the war, Ireland, his ants, Brownie, the Roman Catholic Church, Arthur—all these circumscribed White’s attention in a fairy circle out of which he was powerless to break. His efforts to join the war, themselves undertaken with grave misgivings about leaving Brownie, were being frustrated. The Cambridge First with a Book-of-the-Month Club best-seller to his credit was, so it appeared, nowhere needed by his fellow Englishmen. He was out of tune with the temper of the times.47 And Arthur, to whom he had given all of self, was coming to his end at Salisbury Plain. One senses great relief in White’s ‘Pendragon can still be saved! ’ What a chance to continue in the company of his created characters, to take solace from their wisdom and comfort from their admiration: they were the close-knit family White had never known. No wonder of it that an opportunity to continue TOAFK was of such immense appeal. White was now like a beautifully-schooled horse at the hands of a capricious master: frustrated in his inclination, chastised for his willingness to perform what his education had taught him to expect,

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and driven well-nigh mad by being given harsh and conflicting commands. He was out of step with England. Whatever his true feelings might have been, his inclination to offer his services to England had been repudiated. His talents as a writer and as an enthusiast had been given their true value by being spurned disdainfully by an Establishment to which he himself might have pretended had he not been crippled by poverty. He was spurred by desires. He had curbed himself from indulgence in those desires by self-exile in the backwardness of Ireland. He was curbed, too, by memories of the decent Anglo-Indian society in which he had been raised, and to whose tenets he tried to remain faithful. Battered by depression and drinking fits, his native fastidiousness and immense industry kept those desires in check, impossible of fulfillment. The price White paid was a growing distrust of people and their motives. Close relationships on an extended daily basis were agony for him; he was at the mercy of the demon that prompted him to test each love offered him by lashing out at it; intimacy, in the heterosexual sense, was impossible. (His vision of Guenever shows that White, however, did not repudiate the idea; indeed, he must have desired it greatly—no one could have written the lyric passages about Guenever and Lancelot without great feeling—but the achievement of such intimacy was never to be his.) The only realized love of his life was his red setter, Brownie, whom he would have to abandon if he went to England. In this mood of frustration and despair, White must have been immensely susceptible to the beguiling dream of surrendering himself to the continuation of Arthur—especially Arthur among the animals of Sword. A return to the Combination Room would be a revisit to the scene of his success and self-enchantment: he would even get rid of an old enemy and hang the stuffed body of old Jack the Pike over the fireplace! A return to the badger’s sett in Bodmin tumulus has the sense of the return to the safety and comfort of the womb.

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But White, even as Arthur, would travel to return to the real world. And then he would not even have a feather, a fragment of beauty, with which to defend himself. On the evening of 6 July 1942, one year after he had written Merlyn, White sat down to find a new last sentence for the book. He browsed through Bullfinch, and discovered: There is a theory that Arthur=the star Arcturus, while the Round Table=the movement of the stars round the Pole. So I wrote my last sentence, ending: ‘and there Arcturus shines in princely splendour. The Serpent, Goat and all the others sit beside him at the banquet, and the Round Table of the sliding stars revolves about the Pole.’48 I had the curiosity to look at a star map which I had really never studied before. Now the main characters in the Book of Merlyn are Badger, Goat, Cavall (a dog), a Snake, a Merlin, an owl called Archimedes, and Merlyn. I find in my star map the Little Bear (which is a perfect description of a badger, the last of our English bears), the Goat, the Dog Star, the Serpent, Aquila, and a star called Antares (anti-Mars) who could well personify Merlyn. On the moon there is a crater called Archimedes. I may have known these things unconsciously, but it seems queer that I should have chosen these particular animals without apparent knowledge of why I was doing so. Most of them are actually neighbors of Arcturus. And all, except Little Bear and Archimedes, do sit round the rim of the Round Table, if you make that rim touch Arcturus.50

I wonder with some sadness how many times, from how many lonely places, White was to look at the skies of night for reassurance of his dream’s existence. It is a sobering thought that, for the man who brought so much in the way of delight to others, he was himself able to relate only imperfectly to the world of men and women, and that he found himself inspired to confidence most surely in committing his thoughts to journals; for reassurance, lifting his eyes to the nighttime skies. As he so often did, White committed his lonely thoughts to the sounding board of his passions, his journal, when he had completed TOAFK. Almost the last journal entry in the large, rough-bound book with linen corners, with the Bibi Chand falconer from Cockerell and the laboriously vermiculated pages, which had lasted White almost from the time he arrived in Ireland, was written on 24 October 1941:

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Most of the writing in this journal seems rather unreal to me, since I am returning to England to join the war. I suppose I had to find good reasons against the war, while I was finishing my book. While that was still unborn I had to assure myself of unnecessary excuses for keeping out. But the book itself, particularly in Book 2 Chapter 5, and Book 5 Chapter 18, is my reason for going back…If I had not written and believed these two chapters, I should not have needed to go.

In the event, White did not go back to England. He stayed in Ireland, agonized, and wrote. It was White’s fatality, as Warner observes, to find nothing difficult, and it is a measure of his candor that, at the time when he wrote his journal entry, he believed it, had every intention of returning to England and joining up in the war effort—and he found it fatally easy to believe that he could not do this, fatally easy to convince himself he should not return. What is left is the autumn’s scourings of wind-blown leaves: White’s remorse and self-hatred is the detritus in the journals. He could no more outrun his private demons than the servant in the story in TOAFK who flees Damascus to escape death, but only succeeds in keeping his appointment with him in Samarra. The words of another man, roughly the same age as White, are apposite here, although they recall a life of a poet who fought in World War I in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers: If condemned to relive those lost years I should probably behave again in very much the same way; a conditioning in the Protestant morality of the English governing classes, though qualified by mixed blood [Graves was part German, part Irish], a rebellious nature and an over-riding poetic obsession, is not easily outgrown.51

White would have lived those lost years the same way, too; he was captive to his heredity and upbringing. What he left from his troubled heart was what the best of his mind could provide; the frailties of flesh were momentarily vanquished. In loneliness, long years before, he had written: To write something which was of enduring beauty, this was the ambition of every writer.52

Appendixes appendix a: t.h. white’s autobiographical fragment 4.ii.mcmxli [< > indicates material in Warner] Reading Graves’ ‘Long Weekend’ made me think back to 1920–1924, when I was at Cheltenham. I still find it difficult to imagine this time factually. Sir Edmund Gosse says somewhere that the children of the lower classes do not tolerate being thrashed, but the children of the upper classes do tolerate and are said to take a melancholy pride in it. I suppose this is a vestige of the Norman conquest. The Normans imported buggery and flagellation, I believe, which were not Anglo–Celtic vices, and thus they became distinctive of the upper classes. I was trying to remember how often I have been tanned, but couldn’t. Twice at my preparatory school, certainly, i.e., before I was 14. Both times were fair enough and I did not resent them. The first time was for throwing a sharp geometry compass into the air, which landed on its point on the headmaster’s desk. Even then he only made me stand on a chair, but I grinned and clowned at friends over his shoulder, was caught, and this exasperated him into whacking me. I only got three stripes, and felt quite proud. The second time was for a dormitory rag on my bath night. The H.M. had already found me out of bed, and ordered me back to it so that I should not catch cold. But I got out again and was found by him while pillow-fighting in another dormitory, itself a grave offense, so I was caned. At Cheltenham I was tanned at least six times—it seems much more, but these I can remember clearly. Oblivion has scattered some poppy over this, in her kind way, for nearly all my beatings in that place were brutal. Three times by my housemaster, three by the prefects. These would be when I was 14 to 16 years old. There would be about 60 boys in a ‘House’ and for these there would be study accommodation for about 20. This left 40 of the younger boys to herd together in a desk-filled hall called the ‘Sweat Room.’ <My housemaster was a sadistic, homosexual, middle aged bachelor with a gloomy, suffused face. His prefects were lither and brighter copies of himself.> It was easy, between housemaster and prefect, to goad any good-looking boy into being smacked. We in the Sweat-Room had so very little spare time to ourselves, between work and games, that we could be forced into crime by cramping it (the time). They had to write Satis, Vix Satis or Non Satis.

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All masters set too much preparation. a platoon which trained for an inter-house competition. It was of leather and brass, besides the khaki and boots. Also there were hundreds of small rules, also impositions. There was too little time for the impositions, the cleaning, the rules, the lines, the errands and the extra preparation. I was a clever boy—indeed, for half my time at Cheltenham, I was in the Sixth Form. Yet I was put on Satis before I got there, and tanned for it twice by my housemaster. He also tanned me—pretty fairly: the only fair beating I got at Cheltenham—because my science master lost his temper with me and threw my books at my head. I lost my temper in a more gentlemanly way, and handed the books back to him in icy silence, for him to have another shot. The prefects beat me three times. One was for walking on wet grass in the wrong kind of boots. One was for putting my boots in the wrong locker—but I hadn’t. There used to be a frightful scramble for getting boots in the right place in the minimum of time and people would sometimes interfere. As far as that goes, I wouldn’t put it past the prefects to have planted wrong boots. A third time was for something I can’t remember, but about a dozen of us were beaten at the same time, herded together in the shower-bath (‘tosh’) room and waiting for it like aristos in the French Revolution. I have now remembered two other beatings, which brings the prefects up to five, and my Cheltenham beatings to eight. One was for having three successive Defaulters—for the prefects had raised Defaulters to the status of a Non Satis. Another was—I can’t remember. Yes, it was for not cleaning my prefect’s O.T.C. equipment properly—for we had to clean the stuff of a sort of ‘fag master’ as well as our own. I have a strong feeling that I was caned many, many more times than this, but I can’t remember more details off hand. Say it was only eight times in two years. There were 40 other boys (I was not a naughty one) who were being whipped on the same scale. This means 320 beatings in 2 years of eight months each, or something like five whackings a week. It can be imagined that this was a paradise for housemaster and prefect. I should not feel so badly about it if I had risen to be a prefect myself, thus getting some benefit from the system. But the judicial separation between my father and mother reduced the finances of the latter, and I had to leave the school a bit early, to earn money myself in order to get to Cambridge.

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I was a handsome boy, slim and wide-eyed, rather like a gazelle in house photographs. I was once beaten twice on the same day: I can’t remember why, in either case, but one was by the housemaster and one was by the prefects. So that makes ten. the housemaster’s happy day being Saturday, when he collected the Satis cards. (He had an arrangement with a French master called Tommy Falle, who would award the Non Satis without reference to merit.) particularly on Friday nights. <‘Please, God, don’t let me be beaten tonight.’> The one formula, over and over again. When the prefects beat you, The actual sexuality of these beatings increased as the housemaster’s time of retirement drew on. Curiously, it did not increase in him—who always remained red-faced, slow-moved, be-spectacled, stolidly cruel—but in the prefects that he chose. They began making quite fantastic rules about time. You had to undress and be in bed in 3 minutes. That sort of thing. If not, they came round and spanked you in your pyjamas. Eventually, without pyjamas. I was never caught in this undisguised rape, for I was so terrified that I could have undressed and gone to bed in 3 seconds if necessary. I think it was the term after he retired that the head prefect was quietly expelled. Don’t think there was any known ‘sex’ business in the house. There was no open homosexuality or flagellation. All went off in the name of normal discipline, and I left Cheltenham as innocent of any Freudian knowledge or even of any suspicion, as the decent little kid I was. Such, in a school for the Anglo–Norman aristocracy, were the early twenties of the twentieth century, of which Robert Graves has written enough to provoke my memory. 4.ii.mcmxlii But I have a right to add this, that, during all the time that I was a schoolmaster at Stowe (in the thirties) no boy was ever beaten on my representation and no boy ever wrote an imposition for me. 15.iv.mcmxlii I wonder whether citizens of future centuries will even have a clear idea of our own, of the ignorant and mischievous educational systems which underlay our extraordinary claims to know everything about everything. Looking back at my life, it seems to me that I was never taught the important things at all.

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My sexual education would be laughable if it were not tragic: indeed, the only two occasions on which it was consciously attempted were laughable, and it is only the unconscious part which is tragic. The two occasions were these. Once, when I was becoming self-conscious about my virility, perhaps I was fourteen or so, my mother compelled me to sit on her knee (which made me feel awful to begin with) and explained to me in saccharine tones (I did not want to know) how ‘the part of me which I did sou-sou with’ (i.e. piddled) had to be put into a hole in a woman and afterwards that woman would grow a baby in her stomach. This revolting, unsolicited and humiliating information, by which I understood that one pissed in a woman’s bowels, was the more discomforting since I was given to understand that I myself had been haled along helpless in the stomach on which I was sitting. I did not like the idea a bit. The other occasion was at Cheltenham. That terrible old housemaster, whose eyes one could never see behind his spectacles, sent for me to his study. I went expecting to be caned. He was sitting by the fire with a book in his hand and there was an empty chair opposite. He said nothing, only making his accustomed whistling noise, and pointed to the chair, in which I sat. Then he began to read out of the book without preamble. I listened in growing terror, first to some stuff about the germination of flowers and then, as he skipped from page to page, to a blurred horror of mixed statements about syphilis and how people who masturbated went blind. (Good God! How had he found out? From the sheets? Would I be expelled, or only beaten?) I got redder and redder, tried not to listen, wished positively for death, but the remorseless voice droned on in its oppression. After some advice about taking cold baths or violent exercise if I felt ‘like that,’ the book was shut, and I was allowed to go: surprised and relieved, in a way, that I was not going to be beaten or expelled, but not comforted by the knowledge that I should shortly be blind. Neither of these comic turns did me any real harm: it had been done long before, when I was a baby. My mother was a very beautiful woman who was taken out to India when she was of marriageable age, where my grandfather was a high court judge. There is a faded photograph at home, in wasp waist, picture hat and sunshade, which shows that she was really lovely. It is sad to look at this photograph, for I now know that she has always considered herself ugly, wicked and loathsome. I don’t know anything about her character, so she may be wicked or loathsome, but she was not ugly. She has an imaginative and strongly self-centered mind, and, as it is difficult to separate her imagination from the truth, it is unsafe to rely on information supplied by her. My mother received (her own account) innumerable proposals of marriage from the rich and great. She was so beautiful that I don’t really doubt this, but it is significant that she refused them. When she was getting on for thirty, my grandmother had a scene with her (all this is my mother’s story) saying that it was unfair to expect her parents to support her all her life. My mother

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replied in anger that she would accept the very next offer—this seems hardly fair to the offerer, I have sometimes thought—and did accept my father. He was a District Superintendent in the Indian Police, an erect, handsome fellow for whom it was a good match—both because of my mother’s beauty and her father’s influence as a High Court Judge. I don’t know much about their love time, though it must have been stormy. After my birth she refused him further sexual relations, on the grounds of injury to her womb, and settled down to die of tuberculosis, heart disease and other ailments, of which she has been dying ever since. (It is only fair to say that I have a suspicion that she suffers from some sort of toxic poisoning, which might make her feel ill enough without being attributable to any of the great diseases.) My mother has a mode of attrition which I can only call Attritio Obliqua. For instance, she keeps masses of disgusting little pet dogs, and, if I for instance show reluctance to run some errand for her, she will snatch up a dog and coo in its ear: ‘Darling little Oodlums. Oo wouldn’t refuse to do it for your mother, would oo?’ As the result of this kind of thing, my father shot her dogs. It seems clear that my mother was not keen on sex. I can remember vaguely that my baby hands were done up in some sort of cotton glove or bandage, to prevent me investigating my private parts. And there is a dim and frightening memory, brought out by psycho-analysis, of some sort of trouble about being circumsized by my father’s brother. I have seen the very knife in dreams. Then there was an English Nanny who seems to have allowed me to take some babyish liberty when I was three or four. ‘I came in,’ says my mother, ‘and there you were rubbing yourself against her shoulder. It was horrible.’ The Nurse was dismissed and I was spanked. I don’t remember how often my mother spanked me—perhaps it was only once or twice. Can it have been for sexual offences? Can she have comforted me too lovingly afterwards? She used to take down my little trousers and spank me across the bed. I can remember being told that if I didn’t howl I wouldn’t get so many. So I didn’t, and didn’t. But it is difficult to remember what happened when you were a baby. What went wrong? Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Contemporary photographs show a sturdy, defensive boy of five, with yellow hair and a toy sword: a tragedy queen in black evening dress with a diamond star in her hair: and a lean man in white sitting beside dead tigers with a rifle.

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16.iv.mcmxlii I find my life completely incomprehensible, and my character as obscure as my mother’s. How can I ever have been arrested on suspicion of trying to assassinate Mussolini? Yet I have been. My life seems to have been humdrum and scholastic, yet I have won a flying competition from ninety competitors, jumped into the Lillingshire brook while hunting with the Grafton, been shot at in a London fog with a .22 rifle, driven a Bentley through a house without actually killing myself, and been wanted by the police for theft, breaking and entering, assault and battery, and sacriledge [sic]—all committed on one night. How can these things have been? 17.vi.mcmxlii When I was five or six, I began to die of various tropical diseases and had to be taken to England. One day I will go back to India, if I live. I can remember very much very clearly, all strangely lovely to me in separate arrested moments, without future or past. I can remember black circle (charmed) in a barren apology for a grassland, where a goat had been slaughtered and presumably roasted. Can remember toy china animals given me by the doctor when I had endemic: elephants, antelopes, giraffes, tigers, and I put them here and there in a miniature landscape. I had a toy circus, with clown, donkeys and ladders. The clowns, etc. had slots in their feet and hands, so that you could fix them on the ladders. Can remember being taken to a tent by servants on my birthday, and they gave me a railway signal which really lit. And I had an enormous battleship with a steamengine inside, and we floated it on some tank with candles lighted all along the docks. I had a kite which actually lifted me off the ground (great excitement about this) and a donkey to ride and <my father made me a wooden castle big enough to get into, and he fixed real pistol barrels on its battlements to fire a salute on my birthday, but made me sit in front the first night—that deep Indian night—to receive the salute, and I, believing I was to be shot> (my God, this is the first time I have realised why I had reason to believe I might be shot!) Can I remember that I was once spanked for bringing lizards (dead) indoors, when told not to? I had a graveyard for lizards. Can remember Dungee and Chota Syce. Can remember that I had 2 pigeons which I wanted to lay some eggs, so I took them into a cupboard and sat on them. This made them dead. I accused Chota Syce of this crime, when discovered, and allowed him to be beaten for it. But I have a vague idea that it was brought home to me in the end, with the usual result. Anyway, Chota Syce half twisted my arm off for it afterwards. Can remember Chota Syce diving naked into a brown river, but he came out quick. There were water snakes in it. Can remember a puff adder. Can remember a thousand things:
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velvet nights,> smells, food, heat, rabbits (of all things), a stuffed monkey in a Bombay museum, guava jelly, <fireworks, flowers, rains, heats, mangoes, parchedness, nights, flames in darkness>…What a feudal life we lived, in the old days of the Empah! I was the Chota Sahib—the little lord—and I had a personal attendant of my own. If you treated them justly—particularly Mohammedans, I now suppose—you got a feudal response of real loyalty, like a clan. My Chota Syce would have come back to me, if I had gone into the Indian Army when I grew up. I would have been his sahib. He would have felt possessive about his Lord. They were lovely. The velvet night, the vastness, little stars, marigolds, fruits, brassware, Indian stuffs, textures, mirrors in cloth, spangly braid on round hats … I was spanked for throwing a thimble out of a window in a houseboat in Kashmir. Ayah, you cracked your fingers over me in such a way that I shall have to come back. Dungee, you sent me presents years after I had gone to England. Oh, the swords and jingling wheels and burning dung and smoke curling blue… Marseilles, where you could buy toy soldiers (there I first heard that Frenchmen were good but Germans wicked: when playing soldiers, it had to be against the Germans): the ship, on which I got better all the time (under the care of a German doctor): : being woken on a clammy dark morning to see the Lights of England! The first time I had seen them, expecting I don’t know what most marvellous wonder, I was puzzled to understand… At home the quarrels got worse. I can remember several tense scenes, but no pistols, and my father tickling my mother on a bed. Eventually they went back to India, leaving me in the care of the now retired judge and his lady, and there, for something like six years, I never was unhappy (except when I had to go to school) for six seconds together. Blessed and beautiful grandparents, you are the only reason I have for wishing I could believe in God. If I could believe such stuff, I could pray for your happiness. You made a paradise for one little boy in any case, which lasted long and was lovely. I can’t pass the house even now, can’t bear that it should belong to anybody else. Gunga and Grannie, you darlings whose sweetness I never really knew while you were alive, now that you are dead I know what you gave me and what has gone out from the beauty of the world.

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Yet I suppose they are ordinary ones. 18.iv.mcmxlii We must have left India in 1911 or 1912. From 1912 till 1917 or so, I was left in glorious happiness with my grandparents, though I had to go to school. I used to feel sick for a week before the end of the holidays, and to weep as I went, but I think this was only because the holidays were so beautiful. The school was not so bad. 19.iv.mcmxlii The singularity of turf is that it burns silently. Why have I never seen this mentioned in a book? Peat’s sandalled foot falls noiseless in its own rust-colored ashes—it is the absolute silence. Journal 1941–42, Ams with A revisions [236 pp.]

appendix b: t.h. white on women 21.ix.mcmxxxix Convalescent writing [written shortly after Ray Garnett left Sheskin]. Women: Something uncanny about their hysteria. It seldom goes so far as to do their real interests a mischief. Does it ever? A hysterical woman can go so far as to shake her beloved baby’s cradle so violently that the baby nearly falls out: but it never does quite. Unless the baby is standing in the way of the woman’s real interests. Real interests: interests not recognized by the conscious mind, and therefore not by man. À propos of this, the extreme dexterity of their hysteria. Freud says somewhere about how somebody kicked one of his slippers right across a room and knocked over a small statuette, out of a group of statuettes valuable to him, the stricken one being unconsciously disliked. I dislike the shape of women very much, and can scarcely bring myself to draw it. Why? I cannot think of any other shape which I dislike to draw. I could find reasons for the dislike, as one can find reasons for anything if pushed, but they would not be the true ones. It is not a rational dislike. Women are too like men, and too unlike them, to be safe. ...

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Women again: Somebody once remarked to me that a woman never has hysterics when she is alone. Is this true? ... Women: Women are much more jealous than men. They have cause to be. If men were more faithful than women, which they are not, it would be the men who were more jealous. Still, it is a beastly situation. There seems to be a surplus of things in this world, so that there is always more of a thing than is needed, and this surplus rots. Man unfaithful: woman therefore jealous. (Jealousy=fear of unfaithfulness?) It ought to balance. But the women are more jealous than they need be—more jealous than the men are unfaithful—and the surplus of jealousy harms themselves. Women often jealous before there is cause, thus forcing the man into an unfaithfulness which need not have happened. But how can one be sure that it would not have happened anyway, and that the greater foresight of the female unconscious detected it at a distance imperceptible to man? 22.ix.mcmxxxix Another peculiarity of women is their incapacity for detachment. The two most intelligent women I ever met were neither of them able for abstract speculation. Everything must refer to themselves. It is maddening. I said to Phyllis [Tillyard] once that women as a race were not intelligent, a thing which surely I would have been too polite to say to her, unless I considered herself [sic] very intelligent. It was in the course of a long conversation about logic or something like that. But she cried when she went to bed with Tilly that night, saying that I considered her stupid. Say to a woman: ‘I consider the question of corporal punishment completely bewildering.’ And she will immediately answer: ‘How dare you suggest that I beat my children!’ Jealousy, Directed Hysteria, insensibility to detachment: people say that women are unselfish, and men selfish. It is directly the other way round. Women accuse men of selfishness because they can escape women (and themselves) by getting out of themselves a little. No woman has ever got out of herself. They are raving egoists. And as for saying that a woman is unselfish towards her children, that is the maddest thing of all. My existence at home, as far as my mother was concerned, was solely as an extension or attribute of herself. She was the centre, I the circumference. She has not yet discovered my existence. This is all nosense, for Mrs. McDonagh is quite unselfish.

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14.viii.mcmxlii Men are interested in making ideas, women in making babies. This is the point at issue between them. The babies are useless and even pernicious without the ideas—and 99.99% of them are doomed to have none—but the ideas cannot be produced without the .01% of babies who do produce them. The insufferable thing about women is when they copulate with an eye on the baby. Men might just as well copulate with an eye on the idea. It makes copulation false—not for itself—like eating caviare [sic] with a view to nourishment. Worst of all is when the woman not only copulates for babies, but regards her husband as one. Women do not seem to be provided with the sense of copulation—like a sense of taste—and this is what frees them from the tyranny of trying to gratify it, leaving them free to be interested in wider subjects (though not ideas). This is why women seem more grown-up than men. They are interested in wider personal relationships than the purely copular, which makes males who are only interested in personal relationships as copulation seem childish and limited. But men who are interested in ideas equally make women who are only interested in personal relationships, however wide, seem childish in turn.

appendix c: t.h. white on his life 14.vi.mcmxl My life is a lonely one. Healthy adults would think this a contemptible confession, I fear, but I have only one thing in the world: a dog. My parents are separated from each other, and I from them. But I have the dog. Brownie is the only thing: we have loved each other six years, and never been parted for a fortnight. We have only twice been parted at all: once when I went for an operation, and the other time, as a four-day test, last year. Both partings were disastrous. In six years of increasingly unfortunate intercourse with human beings, whom I regard as dangerous and unsatisfactory, I had hoped that I could make life a success for one creature. She sleeps on my bed, eats all my meals, but it is no good going into all that. We love each other. I reduced her, unwisely and cruelly, to a dependent. But I thought I could guarantee a happy dependence for her. Now I am to desert her. I think to myself: I could he happy as a conscript. I could march away with comrades, and get a kick out of it, and be a hero. But when I look at Brownie I don’t know how I can face it myself or what right I have to make her face it. It is all right about having no wife or child or parent or home, only a dog: but she has none of these things either. You can’t explain this to human beings as at present constituted. A thousand years hence, when domesticated animals have developed a bit more—perhaps. But not now.

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21.ix.mcmxxxix Myself: As I drift further and further away from the world, I become happier and happier. They say that to cut the umbilical which holds one to normal life— sex—society—the things which appear to be the human function—means to court disaster: that there will be an inevitable retribution. A continent ascetic scholar always has some frightful nervous breakdown, or madness, or suicide. Yet I don’t feel the convulsions coming on me yet. It is perhaps because the scholar does not live upon himself. He consumes books. A continent ascetic scholar without access to books might well have convulsions. But I am just drifting away from human beings, and their wars and sexes, into a controllable world of printed paper beings, and they are much nicer.

appendix d: t.h. white on christianity 11.vii.mcmxlii Tonight I listened upon the wireless to the induction of the 91st Archbishop of York, and heard with interest, charity and attention the details of this ancient service: heard him knock for admission upon the door of his archepiscopal and metropolitan cathedral, while 3000 waited inside silent behind closed doors: heard him take his oath upon a thousand year old Saxon gospel: heard the trumpets as they sat him on his throne and the seven-hundred year old prayer with which he showed himself to the people. What an inextricable tangle Xtianity has become! That beautiful York Minister itself, the lovely pomp and venerability of ceremonial—all the things which take one’s breath away, they are so old and charitable and quiet and educated and grand: the glass at Fairford: the spire of Salisbury: the tombs of Winchester: the vaulty loom of Gloucester: the kings of Westminster: the organ music and the choir and the peace of cathedral cities: the little offices, precentors and vergers, in a portly pace: the dignified, petty, gentle, assured society of Trollope: and, on top of these, the emotions so wonderfully woven into Xtianity—caritas (how warmly and with what apparent sincerity they welcomed in their archbishop) aspiration, wonder, holiness, peace, contemplation of eternity… And dead inside. It is like a beech-tree seeming with its full summer glory, smooth, greyboled, twinkling with gentle shade. But inside it has all rotted away, and must be cut down. None of these clergy really believe in Christ, nor dare ask themselves whether they do. They dare not ask the date of the first known gospels, dare not read the New Testament critically, dare not try to find out about Jesus with genuine scientific sincerity, as they would try to sift the evidence about Shakespeare. If they did ask fairly, they know that they might have to give up their livings. The wireless finds them out unerringly—by the false voice. It is

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because they don’t believe, are not in touch with reality and daren’t face it, that they have to talk in unreal ‘ecclesiastical’ voices. It is also the reason why nobody is ever natural when talking to a clergyman. They are not ‘natural’—not able to face reality—themselves, and so their interlocutors also do not face reality, and become unnatural. And when one lifts a corner of the drapery, a corner of this heart-achingly beautiful thing which I have been listening to, you find the jobbery and intrigue, the cunning man who rises, the decent or learned man who stays in his remote vicarage. And when you listen to the wireless on other nights, you hear the falsevoiced, mealy-mouthed self-deceivers trying to cash in on the war—ignoble manoeuvre!—trying to make a Xtian revival out of it, and end up as archbishops themselves. Of course there is beauty and goodness and dignity in Xtianity. How could it have lasted otherwise? They have woven charity, etc. into the fabric. The Catholic (I don’t mean Roman necessarily) Church is like some industrious insect or bird which has woven its nest upon shrubs, stems, branches or whatever. The growing, living, good supports, being naturally and rightly out of the earth (charity, etc.). These are adapted by the cunning churchspider to hang its web on. The arts, the architecture, the organ, the utter grandeur of York minister: these are not Xtianity, they are what Xtianity has wisely chosen to lean on. And so, when one feels that Xtianity ought to be abolished and utterly given the boot for its chicanery, insincerity, and for debauching the people, they can point, not to the well-feathered nest, but to the lovely stems it leans on. And then one not only feels oneself that it would be a shame to cut down anything so beautifully supported, but the common herd, seeing the support indistinguishable from the rest, the sweet beech with its rotten core invisible, they think that one is a heartless, hotheaded and deluded malignant to suggest such a thing. There can be few people who love cathedrals more genuinely than I do. They make something nice in my solar plexus. Yes, and evensong, too, in decent country churches. But I would smash the whole fabric of the Xtian priesthood if I could, with their bogus, bleating voices, and purge Xtianity itself till it either died or rose up cured. On the whole, I think I would abolish it, and use the cathedrals for pageants, concerts, dramatic entertainments and public silence rooms for contemplation. 27.viii.mcmxlii The very thing which I feel about Xtianity, and tried to express when I was writing about the induction of the new Archbishop of York, is what I feel about war. War has its wonderfully beautiful side, a side which melts one’s

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heart. I am an enthusiast like Lord Lundy and I cry very easily at glories: at Nelson and the whole tradition of the British navy, which seems now to have descended on the R.A.F., at Union Jacks and military bands and V.C.’s and sacrifice and courage and comradeship and quiet heroism. But this does not make war good or sensible. Just as they have bolstered up the wickedness of Xtianity with mediaeval cathedrals and music and all the beauties which we felt at the archbishop’s induction, so the wickedness of war is bolstered with these things, is confused with these things by stupid people who cannot distinguish the tree from the nest in it.

appendix e: t.h. white on malory 8.xii.mcmxxxix The roots of the Arthurian legend are buried among confused narrative ballads and prose romances in half the European languages, including French, German and Welsh. These tedious roots, which are uniformly contradictory about almost all the relative [sic] facts, were synchronized by the amiable and immortal Sir Thomas Mallory into a consistent whole. Sir Thomas Mallory is generally read, if at all nowadays, as if he were a sort of rambling old buffer with a charming vocabulary—‘wallop’ for gallop, ‘brim’ for furious, ‘awk’ for backward, ‘fall noseling’ for falling on his nose, and so on—and as if he were equipped with a condescension—provoking collection of fairy stories suitable for juveniles, once we have toned down the naughty bits. He is another of the ‘knights-in-armour.’ But, in fact, Mallory must have been a man of the most penetrating intellect and profound education, both in religious dogma and in classical criticism. His synthesis of contemptible and rambling sources into a whole which has beginning, middle and end: which satisfies every rule of Aristotle’s definition of tragedy: which has characters who are true to their own nature and work together insensibly towards the tragic climax: which has besides all the poetry of that ‘noseling’ and all the pathos of Lancelot’s tears: this synthesis is not the work of an old buffer. It would be a gratuitous insult to refer to Mallory’s sources as contemptible and rambling, if Arthurian scholars for the past fifty years had not been accustomed to neglect Mallory in their favour. An interest, originally provoked by Mallory’s finished masterpiece, has, for fifty years, been spending itself in unprofitable researches into whether Lanzelot was a ‘later accretion’ or Gawaine a sun myth or the Holy Grail a satire on Pope (Innocent 3?) Some, the more hoard-proud of these pedantic jackdaws, have even asserted that Mallory’s work is decadent, in comparison with the vernal blooms of their illiterate troubadours: an assertion and an attitude which could only be paralleled if Shakespearian scholars unanimously decided to neglect Macbeth in favour of North’s Lives. It is in such circumstances, between ignorance on the one hand

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and pedantry on the other, that I have devoted a quarter of a million words to what can at best be considered a foot-note to the older writer. My plot, so far as I have been able to make it so, is Mallory’s plot: so I need feel no false modesty in drawing attention to its perfection. Any student of Aristotle’s Poetics would do well to compare the Morte d’Arthur with the classical definition. My characters, except for the minor comic figures, are Mallory’s and nothing more. They are, indeed, but pale imitations of those in Mallory; for he, more interested in plot and ethics than in character, was able to draw them with the strength of a few lightning strokes, where I have tediously discussed their motives. Yet it is the motives of Mallory’s characters that I have been discussing, not those of my own, and if I have given any pleasure in the books which I have been struggling with so long, that pleasure is a watered version of the incredibly rich licquor [sic] distilled by the master: to whom anybody who has been amused or interested by my scribbling should turn for the true fount now. So peculiarly sad is the present-day attitude towards one of our greatest national poets, both on the part of the multitude and on that of the pedants, that I am reduced to the shameful necessity of repeating in the simplest language—for it has become a fact altogether neglected—that the characters in Mallory are real characters, not ‘knights-in-armour:’ that his Gawaine was passionate, his Lancelot muddled, his Guenever domineering, his Arthur kind: that the plot of his Morte d’Arthur was the tragic nemesis which I have endeavored to reproduce (an Elizabethan dramatist called Hughes also perceived it) in opposition to the muslin dreams of Tennyson, and the bowdlerisation of Victorian editors, and the peculiar mixture of pedantry and blinkers worn by people like Burne-Jones, and the now universal ignorance of the general reader. In this belief, and knowing that nothing I have written has reality except as a commentary on the ideas of a great genius, I feel a necessity for this brief critical appendix in which I can confess the alterations which I have made in his earlier work: alternatives altogether unimportant, and which would have been unjustified had they possessed the least importance. Typical of the many minutiae too stupid to be listed at length, is the fact that for certain reasons of probability I have made Morgause the youngest of the Cornwall sisters instead of the eldest! Mallory is inclined to be a little slipshod over his dates. But there are two alterations which perhaps deserve apology. I have made Agravaine the murderer of his mother where Mallory attributes the deed to his brother, Gaheris: and I have run Mallory’s two Elaines into one. Both alterations were made in the interests of economy. I wanted to limit the number of villains, and, as Lancelot already had a mother called Elaine, I felt it was profuse to give him two mistresses of the same name. With these as my major confessions, the student of Mallory will excuse the mentioning of minor adjustments in date and so forth.

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Having written as much as this, I may as well continue into one last subject which has served to excite the critics. It is the subject of anachronism. Critics are always fascinated by anachronisms, and scholastic minds have been exercised about the date at which I am placing King Arthur. The facts are that Arthur, if he existed at all, lived in the fifth century. I suppose he would have gone plodding about in cross-gartered small clothes, stuffed with straw, plotting an occasional ambush upon Saxons equally insignificant. This was not the man that Mallory was thinking about. Mallory, the romantic, educated, antiquarian lover of chivalry, looked back into a world of imagination which was his own creation. He, in the reign of Edward II, has fixed for us the imaginary Arthurian world: a world in which there were jousts, dragons, miracles and other phenomena uncommon under Edward, but in which there were the armour and chivalry and domestic arrangements of his own day—or of one a little before it. I do not believe that Mallory was fond of his own day. He, as I, realized that by the fifteenth century the quaint true flower of the middle ages had declined, and he built his dreaming castles in an earlier century. A few small particles of his own world, however, kept creeping in. The critic must remember that Shakespeare dressed his Scottish barbarian in Elizabethan armour, and they [sic] must realize that anachronisms, in the earlier ages of the world when Chronos had not grown so hoary as he has today, were of less importance to the poetic mind. We have, then, a writer publishing in 1485 the account of his antiquarian utopia. He, in 1485, looks back without the benefits of pedantry to his dreams of the fifth century: I, left guessing at the lovely picture of his mind, can only fix the fourteen eighties as the latest possible date. With some excursions into the more attractive features (what I believe Mallory was really thinking about) with some lapses into the earlier bloom of previous centuries—and in those days, without the blessing of the wireless and the motor car, a provincial castle could easily be a century behind the times—I have tried to follow my leader. So I can only say that for me, as I believe it was for Mallory, the latest date for Arthur is the end of the fifteenth century, while the earliest is the end of the twelfth. Our castles in Spain rest fluidly between those dates, but high above them, lit by a mind’s sunset like all the other imaginary worlds. Yes, but you will say that I have produced a character who talks about psycho-analysis and plastic surgery, and other characters who drop their ‘g’s, a habit of the nineteenth century. Well, Merlin had second-sight; and I can only imagine second-sight as coming from knowledge of the future. To know the future, you must begin in the future: a habit which, since Einstein, we of the twentieth century need have no cause to suspect. I have allowed myself any anachronism I wanted, therefore, when it was connected with a wizard or a witch. Then there are the ‘g’-dropping knights: it seemed to me that this foxhuntin’ comparison was a genuine comment on the ideals of chivalry, so I allowed it. Finally there are the general anachronisms of speech and thought.

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When I was a boy at school, I remember clearly being taught about Henry VIII, and how he cut off everybody’s heads. To that boy, in the afterglow of the Victorian sanity, the whole of history seemed incomprehensible, and therefore dull. I could not imagine people executing their wives, and persecuting Catholics, and behaving so bloodily in all directions. ‘Why did they let him do it?’ I thought. ‘Can they possibly have done it? All this seems to me to be foreign to human experience.’ We know now, in 1939, that executing people, and persecuting people, and behaving bloodily, is by no means foreign to human experience: that Henry Tudor would have made an excellent Führer: and that human nature has hardly changed, has perhaps not changed at all, since Sir Turquine established his concentration camp in Wales. So I have not thought it valuable to write in an antique idiom of ‘thee’ and ‘ye,’ thus placing a gulf of unreality between the old world and our own. It has seemed more sensible to recognize the unity of the human soul in all ages, to throw a light of reality upon the old days, rather than to cast a mantle of unreality across my own shoulders. Also, I cannot forbear from pointing out, Mallory himself is simply packed with anachronisms. 24.vi.mcmxl The nearest historical parallel to the atmosphere which Malory describes, is the atmosphere of the 12th century in England, which lasted as long as the 13th in Ireland. The position about anachronism in the Arthurian picture is as follows. Malory wrote at the end of the 15th century a description of very shadowy events supposed to have taken place in the 5th (6th?) century. Himself an antiquarian*, he pictured them against the hazy background of the 12th century: he had in his mind’s eye a picture of antiquity three hundred years ago, much as if a writer of the present day (in 1940) were to describe the Norman conquest against the sleepy background of the Stuart countryside. (I may mention in passing that, if a writer of the present day did want to describe the Norman Conquest, and did possess a sound appreciation of Stuart England, he could do worse than to describe the Conquest in the light of that appreciation—that is to say, if he were unsure of the true Norman picture. Better go back 300 years than not go back at all, and so Malory evidently felt. He could not go back further, because, in the light of such knowledge as was available to him before the English Renaissance, 300 years was the backward limit of the antiquarian. He had no picture of 5th century England.) And, besides, his sources were mainly 12th century. So far as the Morte d’Arthur is concerned, therefore, we have a man in 1470 describing events attributed to 479** (?) as if they had taken place in the 12th century. But the Arthurian legend did not stop there.

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The great Victorian revival of Arthur took hold of the already complicated time sequence (1470 looking at 479 [?] as if it were 12th century) and transferred it into a fantastic century which existed nowhere except in the minds of Tennyson & Rossetti & Burne-Jones. Malory’s knights, whose main armament was the chain mail, were now tricked out in a fantastic version of plate, in which the pauldrons were iron ivy-leaves and God knows what. They were transported to the ruins of Victorian lunatic asylums, where, with brambles curling round their ivy-plated knees, they looked upwards swooningly into a misty nimbus surrounding the vicar’s communion chalice. The main bequest to us, of this Victorian rendering of the date, is that nowadays everybody thinks of Arthur as a ‘knight-in-armour’: and a ‘knightin-armour’ means to everybody a knight in plate. Nobody thinks of him any longer as a knight in chain. Now, when I come upon the scene, I am faced by a composite figure indeed. I have, in the 20th century, to make the best of a 19th century version of the 15th century looking at the 5th century as if it were the 12th! *Malory (d. 1470?) was an antiquarian. For more than a hundred years before his time the flower of chivalry had been dead, and we already find it actually forbidden in 1327. An ordinance of that date forbids ‘any earl, baron, or manat-arms from tourneying, making […] or jousts, seeking adventures or doing other feats of arms without the king’s special license.’ The last splutter of knightliness had been under Shakespeare’s abominable Henry V, and Malory probably remembered that monarch’s Agincourt with regret. Writing at a time when the old world was being destroyed by the fratricidal Wars of the Roses, surrounded by ‘nouveaux riches’ like the Pastons and De La Poles, horrified by the appropriation of coat-armour by unauthorized persons, hating the growth of towns with their swindling traders and contemptuous of ‘the Commons of this Realm’ who did ‘daily wear excessive and inordinate array to the great displeasure of God,’ he attempted to recreate in imagination the ancient, purest world of chivalry. There is even a story that he himself, a sort of Don Quixote, once laid siege to a Nunnery, in his romantic fervour, and got into trouble for this attempt to re-create the world of derring-do. If I had to fix a precise date, at a guess, for the period of which Malory was dreaming, I would say that he probably thought of Arthur as a contemporary of Henry II. His chivalry is the Norman chivalry of that king, with the Saxon left out. With all the enthusiasm of the present-day antiquarian who pictures the great Duke of Marlborough, and forgets the blood he waded through, Malory seems to have looked back three centuries to Henry II, forgetting the conquered serf. His Arthur stands, to my mind, in a sort of poeticized aura of the twelfth century: that extraordinary century of individualism, in which the second Henry, like Arthur, had a wife who was not above reproach (?), a bosom friend (Becket) with whom, as Arthur with Lancelot, he had an intense emotional bond, an empire beyond

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the Channel, and sons like Mordred to destroy him. But I have not, for this reason, confined my own version of Arthur to the 12th century. **Malory is a historical novelist in three layers, and it is often surprising to find how accurate these layers can be, from the historical point of view. His 5th century Britain is correct, at least for the number of its kings; and it is strange to find that the eleven kings confederated against Arthur are all Gaels (as they would have been if we are to regard Arthur as an Englishman, when he was exactly the opposite)—stranger still to recognize in Anguish of Ireland some authentic Aengus of the Brugh. Malory’s second layer—his romantic 12th century picture of the flower of chivalry—is genuine enough, and fits such ideas of the period as can be formed by the scholar who reads the charming de Joinville or studies the wonders of a 12th century Bestiary, but it completely omits the Saxon. The third layer, his habit of dressing and to some extent housing his characters in the costumes & appointments of his own day (like performing Shakespeare in modern dress) is illustrated by Mordred’s use of cannon against the Tower of London. Gunpowder was not used in England until the middle of the 14th century. But Malory is enough of a lover of the past to impute the use of powder to his villain! 3.viii.mcmxl In real life, such as it was, Arthur was a petty British King—a Gael, to use that term in its broadest sense, or let’s call him a Celt—fighting a sort of guerilla warfare against the English (Sassenach), or Saxon invaders. In Malory he has become an English (Sassenach) King, and it is curious to observe that most of his fights, except the continental campaigns, are now against the Gael. His opponents are kings of Wales, Ireland, Northumbria, Orkney, Cornwall, etc. Thus, although the central figure has slipped out of history into legend, changing sides in the process, yet the sides have remained historical. It is the still unsettled war of Gael and Gall.

appendix f: t.h. white on his war service 16.xii.mcmxli (1) As an author chosen by the American Book Club, I offered my services to the British Council, to lecture in America, a year before the war started. They were politely refused. (2) On the day war broke out I offered them to the Ministry of Information through Sir Sydney Cockerell, who, I thought, being a well-acquainted old gentleman with a handle to his name, might have had a pull. I was politely told to wait.

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(3) On the collapse of France I joined the local Defence Force in Belmullet, but, after a couple of parades, I was politely asked, not to resign, but to absent myself from parade. They were afraid I was a Fifth Column. (4) All this time I was writing a book about the non-fascist ideal (my Arthur book) for publishing which I shall certainly have my head chopped off, if Hitler wins the war. (5) On finishing the book I immediately sent in my papers to a man called Air Commodore Peake, on Bunny Garnett’s recommendation, for a commission in the R.A.F.V.R. special duties branch. Peake, in this case I think almost impolitely, has not deigned to reply—although I posted the application more than a month ago. [reply in book p. 63—22 Dec. 41—] (6) There are no recruiting offices in Ireland, and I cannot get a visa, or whatever they call it, to visit a recruiting office in England unless I have a letter offering me the very employment which I should be visiting the English recruiting office to get the offer of! So now I cannot even win to the latrine squad, as a private soldier with First Class Honours at Cambridge and his name in Who’s Who. 22.ii.mcmxlii Now that my faint effort to get into the R.A.F.V.R. has failed, I am again biting on the gnawing tooth, as if there was a need to justify my flight to Eire, but I half feel that it was a weakness, not to flee, but to volunteer. The trouble is that as one gets older and knows more, there ceases ever to be a single reason for doing things. 14.x.mcmxlii Today I hear with deep relief from the Permit office that I am refused a visa, but I write to Bunny, acquainting him with the facts, in case he feels like doing anything more about it. If he does not, I shall be able to content myself, for several months at least, with having done my best. So I start a new volume. [This is the final page of this journal.]

appendix g: constance white’s journal ‘all this interested me’ Marriage is a pretty sticky subject, especially for a bride brought up strictly in the Victorian tradition of being told literally nothing about it. I have read a book which seems to me rather truer than most, where a Bright Young Thing casually stops for the night at an hotel with an equally casual young man. The episode ran more or less on these lines: ‘Of course it’s all right.’ ‘Oh, don’t.’ “Lie still I tell you, you little fool.” “I don’t think I want to, you’re hurting—oh.”

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“Be quiet will you, I tell you it’s all right.” “Oh, you’re hurting me—oh, don’t.” And later the reasonable next morning reflections of the far-from Bright Young Thing: ‘if these are the roses and raptures one reads of, damn liars the authors and poets are’—and she had spent the night in a comfortable bedroom after a decent dinner. Well, we went straight off into “districts.” First an early morning wedding, satin & lace and crowds of friends, hundreds of presents, and champagne and speeches, and then away—married. A seven hour journey in the heat of the day by train, and then a night’s break in a strange bungalow lent by a friend who was away in England. The whole journey to my husband’s District was too far for one day. When we reached the bungalow we found it was practically unfurnished. There were 2 deck chairs and a small collapsible table outside, a distorted mirror on a nail on a wall, a tin basin on a broken chair, one completely bare bedstead without mattress or mosquito curtains and one simple camp bed properly equipped: nothing else at all. Still there were my new luncheon baskets to open for dinner to cheer us up. My mother’s cook had asked me the day before what I wanted, but I had no idea that I was supposed to order a wedding banquet of champagne and turkey and foie gras and anyway I could not have ordered anything because I was completely dumb. I’d lost my voice from a bad attack of laryngitis a week before and I was forbidden to try to speak for a fortnight for fear of straining the vocal chords [sic] and being permanently dumb. So I just left it to him, and when we unpacked the baskets there was no champagne, only oranges and bread and potatoes and an almond pudding and wedding cake—what a dinner! After it, the bridegroom’s feet in boots comfortably cocked up on the table whilst he read the paper. I had never seen feet on a dinner table before! And then that narrow bed. Pity ignorant brides. The heat, the passion, the torrent of love words, male satisfaction—and Finish: ‘That’s done, let’s get some sleep now.’ His hot sweating arms relaxed, his satisfied body heaving over, to sleep with his back to the bride. And the bride awake, the horrible smell caught under the mosquito net, her body outraged. No sleep, no escape for her, biting on the bullet of his unromantic ‘you’ll get used to it’—lying as still as possible till he slept, and then creeping cautiously, not to waken him, creeping from that foul bed, to lie alone on the other bare bed without a mattress or curtains, only too thankful to be alone. Yes, a sticky subject. Best forgotten. But consider the bridegroom. Would you have cared to waken the next morning and find the girl you had married could not endure spending the first night beside you? Just think.

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Within a few days of our marriage I realized that my husband was obsessed with the fear of assassination. I noticed how frequently, when we were out after quail or any sort of small game, he would glance backwards furtively over his shoulder, and I was more than surprised when I first saw him hiding his revolver under his pillow when he went to bed. This daily habit of his became, when he had taken too much to drink, more than a little tiresome and dangerous. A drunken man may have a special providence taking care of him, but I have never heard that the special providence concerned itself with the protection of a sober wife and small baby. I have a vivid recollection of him swaying to bed with a lighted oil lamp in one hand and his loaded revolver in the other, far too drunk to realize that lamps and mosquito curtains should be kept well apart. The job of persuading him to let me have the lamp whilst he covered me with the revolver makes me feel sometimes that even events in Chicago might be tame in comparison. Everyday life with a drunkard can be quite thrilling, especially in a motor car, when you sit beside a driver who is literally ‘blind’ and has to be told when he comes to turnings or gates. The thrill of course is because he has no sense of speed or danger or responsibility. It is easy to ask, ‘Why stick to him, why didn’t you leave him?’ But life is more complicated than that. I told him once that I wouldn’t stand any more, my people in Africa would take care of me and the baby. It is hateful to remember the man grovelling in tears at my feet—saying he would go utterly to pieces without me, would lose his job and there would be no money to educate the kid. If I would give him a chance he would pull himself together. It is impossible to do some things. Seven years later I left him for ever. He brought a case in court against me ‘For Restitution of Conjugal Rights,’ to force me back, but the judge refused his petition and gave me a Judicial Separation for Cruelty. The doorkeeper in that Court made one of the most crushing remarks I have ever had repeated to me. He said cheerfully, ‘She must have been a good looker once.’ My counsel told me he was ‘pleased with me, because the women in the public gallery were weeping when I was giving evidence.’ Mr. Justice Horridge, the Judge, was extraordinarily kind to me. I had no idea that the horrible things I had to describe were ever heard except ‘in camera.’ He helped me over the beastliest parts. A man, asking for a restitution order had never been heard of in England before. It was a frightful shock to me to find my case was a ‘cause célèbre.’ The court was packed; every barrister who could force his way in, scrounged in somehow; every newspaper had great placards all over London and the Provinces. Photographers made my life a burden; hordes of them hunted me wherever I went. My solicitor tried to hide me, but the moment I was out of the building they tracked me down. We dodged out of back doors, down the

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basements of kitchens in restaurants, but it was no use. Where ever we went scouts caught us and relays of photographers lined the pavements. I walked blindly through the streets with a newspaper covering my face, guided by my solicitor, holding my arm. As each man in turn was foiled as I passed, he would run down the line of men with cameras and take up a new position at the further end. At last, when the case ended, a deputation came into the Law Courts where cameras are not allowed, with an ultimatum. Unless I would let them photograph me they would follow me to my home and wait night and day till they got a picture for their papers. I begged them to let me off. I explained I had a young son at Cheltenham and implored them to save me any further publicity, but they said it was their bread and butter. They had to get my photo for their papers and I could be quite sure they would succeed. I had to give in. There were reporters of course in the Court. I overheard a young man holding forth on what he was going to write, and an older man was cautioning him, and warning him not to jump to conclusions, and the doorkeeper was chipping in saying what a fool I was to fight the case without witnesses: the judge would throw out the case in a few moments and I hadn’t a hope! All of which was not exactly comforting. As I said, the whole place was one jammed up mass of people and it was almost impossible for me to get in at all. I was in the witness box for a whole day. I’d made up my mind not to let any of my friends or relations know when the case came on, so, except for my solicitor, I had no one there on my side in all that crowd. When it was over there was an astonishing scene. All those strangers in the rows of benches crushed forwards and backwards to shake my hand and say kind things to me; the dear kind judge beamed at me from the Bench with such a jolly big smile, and there was I, like a fool, crying, and everybody was thumping me on the back and arms and telling me I was all right, and I must buck up because I’d WON. It was an extraordinary experience. If they were sympathetic over the very little I dared to speak of, I wonder what would have happened if I had told them of the months when my body was rigid and tortured with inflammation, black and blue—when an unguarded movement was so painful it needed all my will power not to flinch: above all, the unbearable horror of anticipation, knowing I was always at his mercy, and he had no mercy. I suppose an over sexed man in a way suffers too. I don’t know. I don’t blame him; I don’t bear him any ill will for what he did to me, but I don’t like to remember the bride, that rather nice girl he spoilt. It is queer how Life tosses the most incongruous couples together. What he needed, was a jolly coarse-fibred companion, common and hard, who would have kept him in hand, shouted him down, frightened him into rough decency. He was a coward and could have been cowed. He wanted what I could not

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give and when he could not break my spirit he revenged himself on my body, which was his; he held the trump card; he knew I would suffer anything for the sake of my little son. Was that marriage made in heaven? Sanctified? Would any merciful spirit exact the last pound of flesh and blood till death? This Church of mine countenances Separation, but never divorce and remarriage—why? It firmly insists upon a life of celibacy after an unhappy mistake. Though every instinct in the man and woman is against it, noone may love them again. Like lepers or maiden aunts, they must be sterile, unkissed, unloved. Isn’t this heaping punishment upon punishment? One hell upon another? Is it fair? Because they have suffered badly, must they be denied a home? What good does it do? That surely is the real question? If the suppression of all natural instincts resulted in doing anyone any good, it would be a righteous law, but what possible good can it do to any body? For what reason is one given a beautiful body, soft lips, an eager heart and a great talent for friendship, if again and again one has to drive one’s dearest and best friends out of one’s life—to live—or die alone, Is that the lesson we have to learn? Only our physical part in this world is part of a whole which at death will blend again into an indivisible unity. Our vital selves are cut off and can never blend with or depend upon other spirits. Like children learning to walk alone, are we being bludgeoned into accepting the truth we shudder from, that when our bodies die, our spirits must face an after life unsupported. When shall I be brave enough to face this? Like a baby, my spirit wants to have friendly hands to clutch on to—it is afraid to adventure alone. Yet there is no adventure I want to refuse. I would rather force my way through a hedge of thorns for the joy of attempting something new and difficult, than turn away cautiously like a coward for fear of being hurt. What does it matter if one is hurt? It’s fun—it’s fun to know oneself less cowardly than one’s body. All that matters is that one must not hurt anyone else. Attempt the impossible and it becomes possible. Take on more than you can do, and you will do it somehow. Think of all you miss by caution! ... Human contacts are difficult, at any rate for me. However hard I try, something goes wrong. Roughly—my thoughts and all I own I hold at the disposal of my friends. I give all my energies to my garden, and all my heart to my dogs. It sounds pleasant enough. But one’s friends care for one too much or too little and I am not really strong enough for all my garden work and dogs, however dear and faithful they are, cannot be kept alive forever. And then what? Why live? I don’t know. I’ve got luminal and a bottle of laudanum and a pond at the bottom

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of my garden. But it seems to me rather rotten not to pay with a smiling face, if possible, for what you have done. Make no mistake—you can never escape a reckoning. If you hurt anyone, you will be hurt. If you sin against the light, your soul will die. The balance is held true. What others have done or not done, has nothing to do with your personal responsibility. Whether you like it or not you will be given no choice, you will be forced to atone in personal suffering for every hurt you have inflicted on every living thing—including yourself. [From the words ‘make no mistake,’ through ‘including yourself,’ White has scored a line in the margin, and written in his sole editorial comment contained in the manuscript, ‘Tremendous.’] ... (Stewart) Though I loved him, we could not have been happy together. I was too young, too inexperienced, too uneducated for him. Although he was clever he did not understand how hard it always is for me to be ‘controlled.’ When he said ‘You may not’ or ‘You shall not’ I jibbed. But if he had said, ‘You may, but it will hurt me if you do’ I would have cut off my hand rather than hurt him. He had his own deep convictions—but if we had been married there would have been trouble. He believed in a curious method of birth control: a year to think, a year to pray and a third year to purify oneself before union, so that the child should be given every chance possible before conception. But when one loves, the soul of the unborn child comes day and night beating on one’s heart’s door for admittance. I know. That babe we never had nearly drove me mad. For years and years my empty arms ached for it. How could I have endured to wait three years? Birth control when one loves? It is impossible. He died 15 years after we parted. I know the day. His child never came knocking at my heart again, with his grey eyes and a cleft in his chin. He ought to have been mine. No other man, no other child mattered to me again. I wish I could have buried myself inside Stewart’s mind, understood him, realized what influences had moulded him. What made him put women on a pedestal? What line of thought forced iron self control upon him? His Yea was Yea, and his Nay Nay: even his Belovedest could not alter that. When he asked me to marry him, he knelt at my feet and kissed the hem of my skirt. ‘The latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose’ he murmured. Strange words to a girl who knew nothing of pedestals, whose only ideal was to be a good companion, a good scout: they bewildered me, frightened me. I only saw a man kneeling, whom I must shelter and protect. The world has very little mercy on idealists. He chose the queerest place for this—a hot, carpetless corridor in a hotel in Bombay. My mother and I had just come out to India, and he had come to say good-bye because he had to go ‘up-country’ by an early train. She was in the room behind the door at my back, quite unsuspecting. I’m not surprised. I had not expected it myself—there! And the next day my first love letters from him came. ‘Belovedest…’

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It burst like a bombshell in my heart and brain. He wrote to me twice every day, and I kept all the letters until I married. Then I packed up my treasures with my heart and sent them away, back to him. ‘Es hat nicht sollen sein.’ He was ‘cultured’ and I was not. Noone had ever taken the trouble to teach me anything. I never mixed with cultured people. He would bring me Liza Lehmann’s songs and ask me to play Schubert’s music to him. He opened avenues which were all strange to me. ... But Stewart taught me more about books. I had read everything and anything— French, German, Dutch, English. I read without taste, without discrimination. I could not tell good writing from bad. All I cared about was the story, not how it was presented. I had no idea what Stewart meant when he objected that a book was badly written, but I understood there was something I had missed which somehow I must get hold of. He gave me a list of books and told me to read nothing else. Slowly, very slowly, I began to read; to appreciate what I read; to discard showy, meretricious ‘look how clever I am’ stuff. Faithfully I schooled my mind to respond only to the right word, to the simple clean thrusts of the masters of this craft. I have tried never to meddle in my son’s life and character, except as regards his taste in books, and I am proud of him because he not only reads now. He writes well—sometimes.

From the Journals of T.H. White Printed by kind permission of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Notes notes to preface 1 2 3 4 5

New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1986. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1993. arthuriana, 11.3 (Fall, 2001): 103–13. Gallix, p. xlix. FAX to author, 17 August 2006.

notes to introduction 1 New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1958; hereafter referred to as TOAFK. 2 London: Collins, 1940; New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1939; hereafter referred to as Witch. 3 The Queen of Air and Darkness was never published separarately, but appeared as the second volume of TOAFK. It will be referred to hereafter as Queen.

notes to chapter one: t.h. white 1 Sylvia Townsend Warner. T.H. White: A Biography (London: Cape with Chatto and Windus, 1967). I am indebted to Warner’s book for the facts of White’s life and for the circumstances of his death. In my rearrangement of her presentation, I have however made use of some of White’s own previously unpublished materials. 2 Warner, p. 342. 3 Warner, p. 343. 4 The third of White’s novels to be chosen as an offering of the Book of the Month Club. 5 London: Cape, 1947; New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946; hereafter referred to as Repose. 6 White’s 1963 lecture tour. 7 White’s 1963 lecture tour. 8 W.N.P. Barbellion, Journal of a Disappointed Man (London: Chatto & Windus, 1919). 9 Warner doubts that White was told this; she writes that it is very possibly the sort of thing that his mother would have been likely to relate to him later: ‘The doctors told me you had only six months to live.’ See Warner, p. 37. 10 Journal 1941–42. 11 White’s 1963 lecture tour. 12 See Appendix G. 13 See Appendix A. 14 Warner, p. 21. 15 Warner, p. 83. 16 Warner, p. 42.

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17 Warner, p. 43. 18 Journal, 1928–29. 19 Journal, 1928–29. 20 Warner, pp. 49–50. 21 Warner, p. 55. 22 James Hillman, Senex and Puer (Putnam, Conn.: Spring Publications, 2005). 23 London: Collins, 1933. 24 London: Collins, 1934. 25 London: Collins, 1935. 26 New York: The Viking Press, 1932. 27 As James Aston (London: Chatto & Windus, 1932). 28 London: V. Gollancz, 1932. 29 London: Collins, 1936; New York: Macmillan, 1936; hereafter referred to as England. 30 England, pp. 69–70. 31 England, p. 327. 32 Warner, p. 82. 33 Warner, p. 83. 34 Warner, p. 89. 35 London: Collins, 1938; New York: G.P. Putnam’s Son, 1939, hereafter referred to as Sword. 36 Warner, p. 100. 37 As proof of his attempts to be of use, see Appendix H. 38 Warner, pp. 108–09. 39 The Beastiary: A Book of Beasts: Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century (New York: Putnam, 1960). 40 London: Collins, 1941; New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940, hereafter referred to as Knight. 41 T.H. White, The Candle in the Wind, published in The Once and Future King (London: Collins, 1958; New York: Putnam’s 1958); hereafter referred to as Candle. 42 Austin and London: The University of Texas Press, 1977; hereafter referred to as Merlyn. 43 London: Cape, 1948; New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1947; hereafter referred to as Elephant. 44 Warner, p. 251. 45 Warner, pp. 271–72. 46 Warner, p. 272. 47 Warner, p. 273. 48 Warner, pp. 277–78. 49 Warner, pp. 279–80. 50 Warner, p. 288. 51 Garnett, p. 274. 52 Garnett, pp. 277–78. 53 Garnett, p. 8.

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54 Donald Attwater, The Penguin Dictionary of Saints (New York: Penguin Books, 1965). 55 Warner, p. 342.

notes to chapter two: constance white 1 See Appendix G, which recounts events of her life with Garrick White as well as her experiences with Stewart, and her efforts with her son. 2 As given in his autobiographical fragment; see Appendix A. 3 See Appendix A. 4 See Appendix G. 5 Appendix G. 6 Appendix G. 7 Warner, p. 89. 8 John Moore, in Warner, p. 89. 9 Warner, pp. 123–24. 10 Warner, p. 251. 11 Warner, p. 26. 12 See Appendix G. 13 Garnett, p. 55.

notes to chapter three: sources 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Warner, pp. 133–34. Warner, pp. 134–35. Warner, p. 31. Warner, p. 38. Warner, p. 38. Warner, p. 98. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1943. Eugene Vinaver, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory (Oxford, 1947); hereafter referred to as Works. 9 Sir Edward Strachey, ed. Le Morte D’Arthur (London: Macmillan, 1899); hereafter referred to as Strachey. 10 Warner, pp. 129–30. 11 Journal 1939–41, 12 December 1939; see Appendix E. 12 Works, p. 11. 13 Works, p. 15. 14 Works, p. 13. 15 See Chapter 4: Omitted and Minor Characters. 16 Works, p. 43. 17 Book I, Chapter 19; Works, p. 41. 18 Book I, Chapter 19; Works, p. 41. 19 Book I, Chapter 17; Works, p. 38. 20 Book I, Chapter 21; Works, p. 46. 21 Book I, Chapter 18; Works, p. 39. 22 Book I, Chapter 9; Works, p. 19.

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23 TOAFK, pp. 550 and 579. 24 Book I, Chapters 26–27; Works, p. 55. 25 Chapter 11; Works, p. 24. 26 Works, pp. 76–77. 27 TOAFK, p. 344. 28 Chapter 1; Works, pp. 125–26. 29 TOAFK, pp. 338–40. 30 TOAFK, p. 393. 31 Works, p. 253. 32 TOAFK, pp. 355–81. 33 Chapter 7; Works, p. 263. 34 Chapter 28; Works, p. 418; TOAFK, pp. 355–57. 35 TOAFK, p. 600. 36 TOAFK, p. 318. 37 TOAFK, pp. 451–52. 38 Works, p. 803. 39 For a fuller discussion of White’s characterization of both Elaine and Guenever, see Chapter 4 and Chapter 6 respectively. 40 Warner, pp. 152–54. 41 Warner, p. 154. 42 TOAFK, pp. 523–24. 43 TOAFK, pp. 524–38. 44 TOAFK, pp. 541–44. 45 TOAFK, p. 635. 46 TOAFK, p. 564. 47 Appendix E. 48 TOAFK, p. 132. 49 TOAFK, p. 198. 50 TOAFK, p. 229. 51 TOAFK, p. 559. 52 TOAFK, p. 204. 53 TOAFK, p. 306. 54 TOAFK, pp. 445–47. 55 TOAFK, p. 559. 56 TOAFK, p. 233. 57 TOAFK, pp. 243, 560. 58 Henry V, Pro. lines 28–31. 59 TOAFK, p. 274. 60 TOAFK, p. 446. 61 Sir Ector’s, TOAFK, pp. 36–38; Morgause’s, TOAFK, pp. 280–81; Lancelot’s, TOAFK, pp. 621–22. 62 TOAFK, pp. 442–47; 539–49; 559–69. 63 See Appendix E. 64 Garnett, p. 77.

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65 Jessie L. Weston, The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac (London: Nutt, 1901). 66 Merlyn, p. 135. 67 See Appendix E. 68 TOAFK, p. 235. 69 TOAFK, p. 566. 70 TOAFK, p. 542. 71 TOAFK, p. 332. 72 TOAFK, p. 334. 73 TOAFK, p. 346. 74 TOAFK, p. 563. 75 TOAFK, p. 562. 76 TOAFK, p. 234. 77 TOAFK, pp. 662–63. 78 TOAFK, p. 559. 79 TOAFK, p. 567. 80 TOAFK, p. 563. 81 TOAFK, p. 108. 82 TOAFK, p. 444. 83 TOAFK, p. 445. 84 TOAFK, p. 446. 85 White speaks of borrowing a book on heraldry from Cockerell in his letter of 12 August 1939 quoted in The Best of Friends (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956), p. 67, and in a later letter to Cockerell excuses himself from the requirement of returning it. 86 TOAFK, pp. 150–51. 87 Written about 1327; Phillips MS 2336; Caius College MS, Cambridge. 88 Both of which appeared during the fifteenth century. 89 Unaccountably, the only modern edition of Le Art de venerie was published with Gaston Phoebus’ La Chasse du Cerf in 1908: Alice Dryden ed. Three Hunting MSS (Northampton). 90 Garnett, p. 186. 91 TOAFK, p. 4. 92 Warner, p. 90. 93 See Chapter One. 94 New York: Putnam, 1959. 95 In TOAFK and Merlyn, however, White makes use of one extra-Malory Celtic tradition: the Wart, in his adventure at the Castle Chariot, is seeking his dog, Cavall. I wonder why, if he did this, he did not name the boar in the Twiti hunt Twrch Trwyth. 96 Weston, p. 110. 97 TOAFK, p. 108. 98 Tom Peete Cross and Clark Harris Slover, eds. Ancient Irish Tales (London: Harrap, 1936). 99 TOAFK, pp. 243–46.

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100 TOAFK, pp. 259–60. 101 TOAFK, p. 218. 102 TOAFK, p. 559. 103 See Appendix E. 104 ‘Epilogue: To the Queen.’ 105 Sir Sydney Cockerell, White’s great friend, had not only known Ruskin and Morris, but had worked as Morris’s secretary, and after Morris’s death served as his executor.

notes to chapter four: omitted and minor characters 1 Works, pp. 6–15. 2 Works, p. 11. 3 Works, p. 11. 4 Works, p. 7. 5 Works, p. 8. 6 TOAFK, pp. 218–20. 7 Works, pp. 44–46. 8 Works, p. 11. 9 Works, pp. 10–11. 10 Works, p. 15. 11 Works, p. 13. 12 Works, p. 1728. 13 TOAFK, p. 205. 14 TOAFK, p. 206. 15 Warner, p. 99. 16 Warner, p. 99. 17 TOAFK, p. 3. 18 TOAFK, p. 3. 19 TOAFK, p. 3. 20 TOAFK, p. 83. 21 TOAFK, p. 198. 22 TOAFK, p. 199. 23 TOAFK, p. 83. 24 TOAFK, pp. 115–17. 25 TOAFK, pp. 33, 34, and 204. 26 TOAFK, p. 211. 27 TOAFK, p. 69. 28 TOAFK, pp. 96–98. 29 TOAFK, p. 345. 30 TOAFK, pp. 104–05. 31 Works, p. 45. 32 TOAFK, p. 109. 33 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, line 2463. 34 TOAFK, p. 172. 35 TOAFK, p. 173.

notes 36 TOAFK, p. 173. 37 Chapter 15, pp. 93–96. 38 Merlyn, p. 94. 39 Merlyn, p. 96. 40 Merlyn, p. 83. 41 Merlyn, p. 84. 42 Garnett, p. 274. 43 Garnett, p. 276. 44 Works, p. 830. 45 London, 1901. 46 Redmond, p. 34. 47 Works, p. 1018. 48 White’s Strachey Malory, p. 419; Works, p. 1065. 49 White’s Strachey Malory, p. 419. 50 White’s Strachey Malory, p. 426. 51 Works, p. 1089. 52 Warner, p. 151. 53 TOAFK, p. 40. 54 TOAFK, p. 44. 55 TOAFK, p. 72. 56 TOAFK, p. 73. 57 TOAFK, p. 73. 58 TOAFK, p. 74. 59 TOAFK, p. 74. 60 TOAFK, p. 75. 61 TOAFK, p. 77. 62 TOAFK, pp. 100–01. 63 TOAFK, p. 154. 64 TOAFK, p. 153. 65 Garnett, p. 88.

notes to chapter five: morgause 1 Warner, p. 118. 2 Garnett, p. 45. 3 Warner, p. 129. 4 Warner, pp. 129–30. 5 Warner, p. 130. 6 Warner, p. 133. 7 Garnett, p. 61. 8 Warner, p. 166. 9 Garnett, p. 67. 10 Garnett, p. 67. 11 Including The Book of Merlyn. 12 Garnett, p. 74. 13 Garnett, p. 75.

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14 Journal 1939–41, 25 October 1940. 15 Garnett, pp. 83–84. 16 Garnett p. 84. 17 Garnett, p. 85. 18 Garnett, pp. 87–88. 19 Garnett, p. 95. 20 Garnett, p. 98. 21 Warner, p. 186. 22 Warner, p. 271. 23 Warner, p. 271. 24 TOAFK, p. 217. 25 TOAFK, p. 51. 26 TOAFK, p. 317. 27 To heighten the impact of the seduction, White omits all but a bare mention of Lyonors, who, in Malory, is the mother of Arthur’s son Borre before Arthur’s union with Morgause. 28 TOAFK, p. 217. 29 Warner, p. 120. 30 Journal 1939–41. 31 Journal, 1941–42. 32 The Witch in the Wood, T and TCCMS with A printer’s notes [287 pp.] nd. 33 TOAFK, p. 553. 34 Warner, p. 130; also Garnett, p. 86. 35 TOAFK, p. 578. 36 TOAFK, p. 579. 37 TOAFK, p. 579. 38 TOAFK, p. 644. 39 TOAFK, pp. 647–48. 40 TOAFK, p. 655. 41 TOAFK, p. 553. 42 TOAFK, p. 629. 43 TOAFK, p. 647. 44 TOAFK, p. 547. 45 TOAFK, p. 628. 46 TOAFK, p. 628. 47 TOAFK, p. 628. 48 TOAFK, p. 644. 49 TOAFK, p. 645. 50 TOAFK, p. 648. 51 TOAFK, p. 649. 52 TOAFK, p. 652. 53 ‘Mordred…had linked him in unhallowed union with Guenevere the Queen in despite of her former marriage.’ Book X, Chapter 13.

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54 Warner, p. 130, cites these words from White’s letter to Potts, dated 28 June 1939, elucidating that they are ‘The Aristotelian stipulation for Tragedy.’ 55 Warner, pp. 129–30; Garnett, p. 75; Journal 1939–41, 25 October 1940.

notes to chapter six: guenever 1 2 3 4 5

TOAFK, p. 544. TOAFK, p. 432. Works, p. 1097. See Appendix E. Lines 2414–19, trans. T.H. Banks, Jr., from The Literature of Medieval England, ed. D.W. Robertson, Jr. (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1970), p. 403. 6 TOAFK, p. 350. 7 Journal 1939–41; Warner, pp. 150–52. 8 Warner, p. 152. 9 Garnett, p. 69. 10 See Appendix B. 11 Journal, 1939–41. See Appendix B. 12 White’s Strachey Malory, p. 332. 13 TOAFK, pp. 344–45. 14 Merlyn, p. 135. 15 Warner, facing p. 32. 16 In a letter to the author, Warner ventures that Constance White’s eyes were ‘probably blue like White’s.’ 17 TOAFK, p. 581. 18 TOAFK, p. 584. 19 TOAFK, p. 592. 20 TOAFK, p. 595. 21 TOAFK, p. 596. 22 TOAFK, p. 604. 23 TOAFK, p. 606. 24 TOAFK, p. 607. 25 TOAFK, p. 613. 26 TOAFK, p. 615. 27 TOAFK, p. 615. 28 TOAFK, p. 621. 29 TOAFK, p. 622. 30 TOAFK, p. 625. 31 TOAFK, p. 627. 32 TOAFK, p. 631. 33 TOAFK, p. 640. 34 TOAFK, p. 643. 35 TOAFK, p. 646. 36 TOAFK, pp. 646–47. 37 TOAFK, pp. 659–60.

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38 TOAFK, p. 559. 39 Appendix E. 40 Warner, p. 43. 41 TOAFK, p. 570. 42 TOAFK, p. 596. 43 TOAFK, p. 394. 44 Works, p. 1165. 45 Vinaver, Works, p. 1615; p. 1630 (Second Edition, 1967). 46 TOAFK, p. 592. 47 TOAFK, p. 594. 48 TOAFK, p. 594. 49 Works, p. 792. 50 Works, p. 283; p. 282 (Second Edition, 1967). 51 Works, p. 1165. 52 Works, p. 1165. 53 TOAFK, p. 604. 54 TOAFK, p. 626. 55 TOAFK, pp. 626–27. 56 TOAFK, p. 633. 57 TOAFK, p. 638. 58 TOAFK, p. 638. 59 TOAFK, p. 350. 60 TOAFK, p. 398. 61 TOAFK, p. 407. 62 TOAFK, p. 498. 63 TOAFK, p. 642. 64 TOAFK, p. 648. 65 Merlyn, p. 132.

notes to conclusion 1 2 3 4 5

Warner, pp. 98–99. Warner, p. 98. Warner, p. 38. Warner, pp. 41–42. For a discussion of White’s knowledge of Malory scholarship and criticism, see Chapter Three. 6 Warner, p. 105. 7 Warner, p. 142. 8 Warner, p. 144. 9 Garnett, pp. 54–55. 10 Garnett, p. 55. 11 Garnett, p. 55; Knight, p. 69. 12 Journal, 1939–41, 26 November 1941. 13 Journal, 1939–41, 4 April 1942.

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14 Warner, pp. 176–77. 15 Warner, pp. 178–79. 16 Merlyn, p. xx. 17 Garnett, p. 75. 18 There is in the White papers at HRC a 163 page collection of letters dealing with the publication of TOAFK, with narrative bridges by T.H. White, entitled ‘Trouble with Collins.’ 19 Warner, p. 186. 20 Warner, p. 187. 21 Warner, p. 188. 22 Warner, p. 189. 23 Garnett, p. 17. 24 Warner, p. 150. 25 Warner, p. 93. 26 Works, p. 826. 27 TOAFK, p. 431. 28 Warner, pp. 82–83. 29 Journal, October, 1946. 30 Strachey Malory, Bk. XIII, Ch. 18; Works, p. 895. 31 Strachey Malory, Bk. XIII, Ch. 19; Works, p. 896. 32 Journal, 1939–41; Warner, pp. 148–50. 33 Works, p. 1578. (Second Edition [1967] p. 1591.) 34 TOAFK, p. 329. 35 TOAFK, p. 335. 36 TOAFK, p. 332. 37 TOAFK, p. 337. 38 TOAFK, p. 353. 39 TOAFK, p. 376. 40 TOAFK, pp. 509–10. 41 The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, ed. Chase Horton (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976), pp. 303–05. 42 Warner, p. 28. 43 TOAFK, p. 665. 44 TOAFK, p. 674. 45 Warner, pp. 177–78. 46 TOAFK, p. 675. 47 As a part of the war effort, Laurence Olivier would produce a film version of Henry V, a play which White held to be the most revolting play ever written. 48 This sentence does not appear at the end of Merlyn, nor at the end of any of the typescript versions. 49 Journal, 1942–45. 50 Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That, rev. 2nd ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1957), p. 347. 51 The Goshawk, p. 114.

From the Journals of T.H. White Printed by kind permission of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Survey of Criticism on White

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hite’s fiction always received attention, but it has been difficult for reviewers to know precisely how to handle him. White’s fatality was not only to find most things easy (as Sylvia Townsend Warner points out), but to be obdurate against attempts to classify him. Until the publication of Warner’s biography and the White/Garnett Letters, most reviewers took sanctuary in praising White’s powers of invention, his humor, or his knowledge of history. Since then, emboldened by the mass of knowledge given them by these two books, critics have found it easier to make an extended examination of his writings. An exception to this general tendency is Naomi Lewis, who in her 1958 article entitled ‘Whose Arthur?’ (New Statesman 15 [12 July 1958]) makes several extremely perceptive comments about White. Lewis is one of the few pre-Warner critics to probe at all deeply into White’s narrative technique, and she discerns at once about TOAFK that ‘women, particularly domestic women, have hardly a place at all’ in its pages (50). Lewis appreciates the fact that White followed Malory much more closely than Tennyson did. In what appears to be a fortuitous divination of White’s immediate source for Malory, Lewis cites Sir Edward Strachey’s introduction to his 1899 edition of Le Morte Darthur, in which he states: It cannot be denied that [Le Morte Darthur] exhibits a picture of a society far lower than our own in morals, and depicts it with far less repugnance to its evil elements than any good man would now feel (Strachey, p. xxiii). Strachey voices with praise Tennyson’s attitudes toward Malory: Lord Tennyson shows how [the society] should be raised. The ideal of marriage, in its relation and its contrast with all other forms of love and chastity, is brought out in every form, rising at last to tragic grandeur in the Idylls of the King (Strachey, p. xxii). Having rehearsed Strachey’s views, Lewis goes on to say: It should be remembered that there was more than one Tennyson….As a young man he had written not only Morte d’Arthur but the delightful springtime fragment called Sir Launcelot and Queen Guenevere.

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Lewis gives her opinion that ‘from a literary and aesthetic view, [TOAFK ] will certainly impose its picture a long time after, perhaps for always, on any later version that may be read.’ In another article predating the publication of Warner’s biography, ‘Mr. White, Mr. Williams, and the Matter of Britain’ (Kenyon Review 24 [Spring 1962]), Stephen P. Dunn focuses attention on White’s reticence about sex: In fact, like most modern writers, White seems ill-at-ease with sex, at least in its more ‘normal’ and straightforward aspects. The Lancelot–Guenever story, for instance, is treated with discretion and sympathy, but remains peripheral to the story as a whole (365). While I agree with Dunn that White was indeed ill-at-ease with sex (and admire his perspicacity, since he was writing at a time when the facts of White’s life were generally not known), I must take issue with his comment about the supposed peripheral importance of the Lancelot–Guenever affair to the whole tragedy. On the contrary, it is difficult for me to imagine how White could have made the affair any more an integral part of the story as a whole than he did. Certainly the intentions White expressed in his letter to L.J. Potts (Warner, pp. 129–30) make it abundantly clear that White considered the Lancelot–Guenever affair as one of three main themes of the final tragedy. That White was successful at this incorporation I must believe. J.R. Cameron of the University of Victoria, in another pre-Warner article entitled ‘T.H. White in Camelot: The Matter of Britain Revitalized’ (Humanities Association Bulletin 16 [Spring 1965]), praises White for following ‘the familiar story with almost complete fidelity to the main plot,’ while at the same time recognizing that White is a modern writer whose ‘work reveals the influence of his age in…its naturalism of speech, its leaning to Freudian psychology, and its concern with the problem of war’ (45–7). White’s talent for characterization is recognized: ‘Characters are universalized insofar as they consider their problems and relationships with a simplicity of emotion common to average human beings in any age.’ Cameron notes resemblances between White and Tennyson: ‘The task of King Arthur in White’s book is essentially the same as it was in Tennyson’s Idylls: to raise men above a bestial condition of bloody anarchy, and to create a well-ordered civilization out of social and political chaos.’ Writing about Graham Greene’s character Mr. Tench in The Power and the Glory (‘Mr. Tench and Secondary Allegory in The Power and the Glory,’ English Language Notes 7 [1969]: 129–33), D.P. Thomas points out how White’s skill in making literary allusion reinforces the story he tells. Izaak Walton in The Compleat Angler relates the legend of the tench, who is supposed to be a ‘physician’ fish particularly invulnerable to the depredations of the pike, ‘who will not act as wolf to his physician.’ Thomas feels White knew about this

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legend, since after Merlyn changes the Wart into a perch in Sword, he himself chooses to become a tench, and it is as a tench that Merlyn accompanies the Wart on his dangerous journey through the moat of the Castle Sauvage when he meets Old Jack the Pike. It is true, as Thomas says, that Merlyn’s skills as tenchhealer are not in fact called into play with Old Jack; but they are mentioned in connection with the young roach who implores Merlyn to assist him with his hysterical mother, and who addresses Merlyn as ‘doctor’ (TOAFK, p. 43). Of the post-Warner criticism, Martin H. Kellman’s 1973 University of Pennsylvania dissertation ‘Arthur and Others: The Literary Career of T.H. White’ is an impressive effort to evaluate White’s entire literary output, especially in terms of other writers. Kellman attributes to White knowledge of such disparate authors as Joyce, Sterne, Durrell, D.H. Lawrence, T.E. Lawrence, Swift, Freud, and Jung. One particularly intriguing part of Kellman’s treatment of TOAFK deals with his use of the Russian novelists when White wrote Knight. In discussing other influences on White’s writing, Kellman speaks of Constance White and her effect on White’s envisionment of Morgause. Kellman also recognizes the importance of sex to White’s writing, and the contradictory drive that White felt not to meddle with another person, or to try to possess one. Kellman points out that White was not forthcoming in describing scenes of ‘sexual congress, keeping them between the lines rather than between the sheets’ (p. 26), an amusing and just comment which also must have occurred to the anonymous Time reviewer of TOAFK writing in the issue of 8 September 1958. In speaking of the characterization in TOAFK, Kellman feels that Elaine comes through as ‘pathetic but moving’ (p. 116), and that Lancelot was in many ways a projection of White himself, complete with sadistic tendencies. With Guenever, however, Kellman feels that White was unsuccessful, since ‘her character is revealed in statements about her rather than in what she says or does’ (p. 116). I confess to taking exception to Kellman’s view that perhaps his difficulty with women explains why White is so blissfully unconcerned about the improbability that Lancelot can sleep with Elaine and think she is Guenevere [sic], not once, but also a second time much later on (p. 152). A more reasonable explanation for Lancelot’s blissful unawareness—and one less diminishing to White, it seems to me—is that White simply makes it a practice to follow his master Malory in almost every significant regard. That White has difficulty with women in not in dispute, but it is possible for someone to be in perfect sympathy with something that is itself not in his nature. The tact and sympathy with which White handles the Lancelot– Guenever affair is one such evidence of transcending his limitations.

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Kellman makes the extremely interesting point that White explains Guenever’s actions ‘as a consequence of her childlessness, a frequent White theme, and one he felt personally,’ going on to mention White’s letter to Garnett after Brownie’s death in which White says about her that ‘it was because we were both childless that we loved each other so much’ (p. 153). In his treatment of Knight, Kellman notes that ‘the tone, mostly somber, the colors of autumn and twilight, the time and season of transition, are appropriate.’ That the shadows lengthen and the tones darken in Candle, the next volume of TOAFK, I point out at some length in my discussion of the imagery in that book found in Chapter Six. Kellman’s dissertation seems to me to be a first-rate job of literary criticism, particularly impressive since it deals fairly and perceptively with the whole range of White’s literary output, from Loved Helen (1929) through the posthumously published America at Last (1965). Any student seeking enlightenment about the literary forces influencing White’s writing generally and about the merits of the individual books will do well to repair to Kellman’s ambitious dissertation. My own field of vision, although it is I hope comprehensive of White’s life in terms of TOAFK, is limited in its scope of inquiry to discussion of that single work, and concerns itself in large measure with questions of narrative technique, character motivation, imagery, and use of sources. In appraising White’s feelings about TOAFK (and his feelings about other things as well), I have been aided by being allowed to avail myself of the White papers contained in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. This primary source material comes from notes White made for his 1963 lecture tour, his journal entries, and the notes he made in his books. In a dissertation written in 1970 (‘The Social and Political Ideals of T.H. White,’ University of Southern Mississippi), Hershel W. Lott examines White’s major writings in terms of White’s largely pessimistic views of mankind and his attempts to formulate an ideal for world order. Lott points out that White’s views of Victorianism were not one-sided: White admired the sincerity of purpose with which the Victorians married, and indeed admired Queen Victoria herself. Lott writes: She stood for home and the individual. It was not until her death that the values of the Age of Scandal [the work under examination] were replaced by socialism, communism, income tax, public welfare, and Methodism (pp. 133–34). I do not believe that there is anything contained in Merlyn that would influence Lott to change his views; much of the material contained in Merlyn (which was, after all, written in 1940–41) made its appearance elsewhere in White’s writings.

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Containing some excellent criticism of the then unpublished Merlyn is Chris Redmond’s 1973 M.A. thesis, ‘T.H. White’s Use of the Arthurian Legend’ (University of Waterloo), an admirable evaluation of White’s technique, particularly in dealing with Malory. I have preferred, however, to make my own examination of the Malory sources for TOAFK, as well as my own appraisal of White’s technique of historical anachronism. Redmond’s comments are extremely perceptive, and his thorough knowledge of White’s writings adds a great deal to the value of his discussion of TOAFK. However, in at least one instance (where he dismisses the idea that White might have known of the two Elaines contained in Malory), Redmond appears to be doubtful of his subject’s talent, and possibly out of sympathy with the subject himself a bit more than disinterest requires. Barbara Floyd, whose four articles on TOAFK appeared in the Riverside Quarterly 1965 and 1966 issues, notes that White ‘carefully suited his style of writing to his subject, which is why each book seems unique, almost as though written by a different person’ (p. 176). She seems rather to miss the point about the important part which the unicorn hunt plays in prefiguring Morgause’s death (and the sexual implication of this scene) when she writes: ‘this is only one of several incidents that fill out this rather short book and which seem to be there only for the sake of making a moralistic point and taking up space’ (p. 55). It is heartening for those sharing an admiration for White to see the interest which his work continues to inspire. In the autumn of 1977 for instance, The Book of Merlyn sold over 100,000 copies and for many weeks occupied a prominent place on every major best-seller list. Although Warner’s magnificent biography and the White/Garnett Letters edited by David Garnett will endure as cornerstones for any serious study of T.H. White, they will no doubt be supplemented by recourse to the White Collection contained in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. The awesome range of White enthusiasms (from lengthy exegeses of the evangelists—‘Jesus was estranged from his mother’—to ingenious plans for bombers), his immense talent for putting into his work telling detail, his inimitable gift for letter-writing, his susceptibility to the little ironies of history, his almost schizophrenic ability to weigh arguments pro and con—all these will no doubt provide topics for future critical writings about the lonely author of The Once and Future King.

From the Journals of T.H. White Printed by kind permission of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

Bibliography unpublished primary source material In writing this study, I have made use of the materials in the White Collection in the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Items which I have found particularly helpful are listed below. White, Constance. ‘All this interested me.’ Ams/memoirs with A emendations [361 pp. in 2 notebooks]. Mostly undated. Bound. White, T.H. Notebook 7. Ams/drafts and notes [229 pp.]. No date. Contains notes and incomplete draft of They Winter Abroad, published under pseudonym James Aston. ———. Notebook 8. Ams/S notes and drafts [80 pp.] 1928–1929. Contains notes for an unfinished novel of whom the world. Badly damaged. ———. Notebook of miscellaneous material. Ams/notebook [120 pp.] 1935. Contains notes of general subjects, partial drafts of You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down and preface to England Have My Bones, and accounts of dreams. ———. Journal, 1939–1941. Ams with photographs, watercolors, letters, feathers and other items pasted in [395 pp.]. ———. Journal 1941–1942. Ams with A revisions [263 pp.]. ———. Journal 1945–1947. Ams with A revisions [78 pp.]. ———. Journal 1963. Ams. [41 pp.]. ———. Lecture Tour [4 Lectures for American tour] Ama/notebook with printed paste-ins and A revisions and notes loosely laid in [119 pp.] 1963. Bound.

books from white’s library Following are some of the books from White’s library which I have examined and which in my opinion White made use of in the writing of TOAFK. Barnard. Mediaeval England. Oxford: 1924. Browne, Thomas. Pseudodoxia Epidemica. London: Dod, 1646. Cross, Tom Peete, and Slover, Clark Harris, eds. Ancient Irish Tales. London: Harrap, 1936. Crump, G.C., and Jacob. Legacy of the Middle Ages. Oxford, 1938. Duruy, Victor. History of France. Everyman. London: Dent, 1928. Jusserand, J.J. English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages. XIV Century. London: Benn, 1939. Lytton, Lord. The Last of the Barons. Everyman. London: Dent, 1933. Macalister, R.A.S. Ireland in Pre-Celtic Times. Dublin: Talbot, n.d. Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Mort D’Arthur. Everyman. London: Dent, 1935. ———. Le Morte Darthur. Edited, and with an introduction by Sir Edward Strachey, London: Macmillan and Company; New York: The Macmillan Company, 1899. Mann, James G. Armour in Essex. British School of Archaeology, n.d.

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Reinhard, John Russell. The Medieval Pageant. London: Dent, 1939. Steinmetz, A. The Romance of Duelling. London: Chapman & Hall, 1868. Strutt, James. Sports and Pastimes of the People of England. London: Chatto & Windus, 1876. Weston, Jessie L. The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac. London: Nutt, 1901.

books by white White, T.H. The Bestiary, A Book of Beasts. London: Jonathan Cape, 1954; New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1954. ———. The Book of Merlyn. Austin & London: The University of Texas Press, 1977. ———. England Have My Bones. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1936. ———. The Goshawk. London: Jonathan Cape, 1951; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1952. ———. The Once and Future King. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1958. [A full list of White’s writings is found in Gallix, pp. 3–101.]

biography Garnett, David, ed. The White/Garnett Letters. New York: The Viking Press, 1968. Warner, Sylvia Townsend. T.H. White. New York: The Viking Press, 1967. [A great deal of this book is made up of White’s letters and journals.]

published secondary source material Annan, Noel. Roxburgh of Stowe. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1965. Attwater, Donald. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. Baltimore, 1965. Cameron, J.R. ‘T.H. White in Camelot: The Matter of Britain Revisited.’ Humanities Association Bulletin 16 (Spring 1965): 45–47. Dunn, Stephen P. ‘Mr. White, Mr. Williams, and the Matter of Britain.’ Kenyon Review 25 (Spring 1962): 362–5. Floyd, Barbara. ‘Not Any Common Earth.’ Riverside Quarterly I (1965): 176. ———. ‘My Mother’s Curse.’ Riverside Quarterly II (1966): 54–55. ———. ‘Tale of the Ill-Starred Knight.’ Riverside Quarterly II (1966): 127–32. ———. ‘Candle in the Wind.’ Riverside Quarterly II (1966): 210–14. Gallix, François, ed. Letters to a Friend: The Correspondence Between T.H. White and L.J. Potts. New York: Viking, 1968. Geoffrey of Monmouth. History of the Kings of Britain. The Sebastian Evans translation revised by Charles W. Dunn. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1958. Graves, Robert. Good-bye to All That. Revised Second Edition. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957. Hemingway, Mary Welsh. How It Was. New York: Ballantine Books, 1976. Lewis, Naomi. ‘Whose Arthur?’ New Statesman 15 (12 July 1958): 50. Meynell, Viola, ed. The Best of Friends, Further Letters To Sidney Carlyle Cockerell. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956. Robertson, D.W., Jr., ed. The Literature of Medieval England. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1970. Starr, Nathan Comfort. King Arthur Today. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1954. [I could not make use of this book but liked what the author had to say.]

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Steinbeck, John. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights. Edited by Chase Horton. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1976. Thomas, D.P. ‘Secondary Allegory in The Power and the Glory.’ English Language Notes 7 (December 1969): 129–32. The Times. Saturday, 18 January 1964, p. 6. Vinaver, Eugene. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1947. Second Edition, 1967.

unpublished secondary sources Kellman, Martin H. ‘Arthur and Others: The Literary Career of T.H. White.’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1973. Microfilm. 73-24,163. Lott, Hershel. ‘The Social and Political Ideals in The Major Writings of T. H. White.’ Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern Mississippi, 1970. Microfilm. 715393. Redmond, Chris. ‘T.H. White’s Use of the Arthurian Legend.’ M.A. thesis, University of Waterloo.

select list of books and articles post-1978 Adderley, C.M. ‘The Best Thing for Being Sad: Education and Educators in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King.’ Quondam et Futurus 2.1 (1992): 55–68. Annan, Noel. The Dons. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Gallix, François. T.H. White: An Annontated Bibliography. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1986. ———. ‘T.H. White and the Legend of King Arthur: From Animal Fantasy to Political Morality,’ King Arthur: A Casebook, ed. Edward Donald Kennedy. New York: Garland, 1996. pp. 281–311. Howarth, T.E.B. Cambridge Between the Two Wars. London: William Collins Sons & Co., 1978. Jost, Jean E. Rev. of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. By Elisabeth Brewer. arthuriana 5.4 (1995): 100–103. Lupack, Alan. ‘The Once and Future King: The Book That Grows Up,’ arthuriana 11.3 (2001): 103–14. Sandler, Florence Field. ‘Family Romance in The Once and Future King.’ Quondam et Futurus 2.2 (1992): 73–80. Sklar, Elizabeth S. Rev. of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. By Elisabeth Brewer. arthuriana 5.4 (1995): 95–99. Smith, Evans Lansing. ‘The Narrative Structure of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King.’ Quondam et Futurus 1.4 (1991): 39–52.

‘Kurth Sprague’s finely balanced investigation shows T.H.White’s protracted and ultimately successful struggle to eliminate the frustration, misery and bitterness which stemmed from his unhappy relationship with his mother from early drafts of The Once and Future King. Sprague’s exploration of the stages by which White modified his work is penetrating and comprehensive. This fascinating discussion also shows how White eventually succeeded in moving, in the course of the narrative, from children’s fiction to the creation of an adult political fantasy, so making the story more accessible to modern readers, while retaining its spirit.’ Elisabeth Brewer

‘As T.H. White’s The Once and Future King is the most imaginative and perceptive of all twentieth-century retellings of Arthur, so Kurth Sprague’s From T.H. White’s Troubled Heart is the wisest and most sympathetic account of both book and author. Based on a unique knowledge of White’s drafts, letters, life and journals, Sprague’s study shows us the bookish antiquarian who loved dogs and falcoms, the misogynist who gave us the most memorable of Guineveres, the troubled heart who reached serenity. Sprague’s is one of the classic works on the dominant literary mode of last century, the political fantasy.’ Tom Shippey

BOYDELL & BREWER Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF and 668 Mount Hope Avenue, Rochester NY 14620-2731 www.boydellandbrewer.com