The Sword in the Stone, by T.H. White

T.H. White’s rather eclectic novelisation of the childhood adventures of King Arthur is one of the more curious books you could ever read. A mishmash of Arthurian legend, fantasy, comedy and sweaty-palmed Medieval fanboy tomfoolery, there are many things about this story that almost don’t work. The tone, the setting, the story; none of it should rightfully hold together. Yet somehow, against all the logic of publishing, this novel manages to exist and better than that, tells a memorable and fairly decent story.

          We are quickly introduced to our protagonists, a young boy with who goes by the lovely nickname of the Wart, and his adoptive brother Kay. The landscape is unambiguously Medieval, taking place in a castle in the middle of the forest, where its lord Sir Ector – the Wart’s foster-father – needs to find a tutor for the two boys. Thanks to a mishap by Kay and the Wart, a tutor is found in the form of the master-magician Merlyn, who happily accompanies the Wart back to the castle and begins to oversee his education. Having a wizard as a mentor proves to be more interesting than expected, as Merlyn teaches his pupil by transforming him into one animal or another to teach him valuable life lessons; a fish, a hawk, an owl, a badger, and other things besides. Other adventures include witnessing the duel between two silly knights, a rescue-mission in the forest alongside Robin Hood, and a Christmastime boar hunt.

Apparently this is T.H. White

          Overall the story, though a tad episodic, is told entertainingly and with added medieval gusto. The characters each bring something unique to the table, be it Wart’s mildly-tense relationship with his foster-brother Kay, or Merlyn’s eccentricity or the wonderful bumbling character of King Pellinore, and the book’s rather comic nature keeps it fun throughout. It is an odd beast, made odder by the slightly confused setting. The Arthurian legend was born of the so-called Dark Ages of post-Roman Britain, and while the many legends and adaptations involving this story quite rightly put it in a generally non-specific medieval setting, T.H. White’s version is a little more confusing than most. There is no definite placing of the story in terms of period, while events, places and concepts that have no place in the Arthurian canon are dotted all over the place. Eton College (est. 1440) and the Battle of Crecy (part of the Hundred Years’ War, 1337-1453) are both mentioned in dialogue, while Robin Hood and every single one of his Merry Men (including Friar Tuck) play a rather significant role in the story, despite Robin Hood being associated with the reign of Richard I at the end of the 12^th Century. Even Uther Pendragon, legendary king of Birtain and Arthur’s unknown father, is given no real place in time, an offhanded reference from Pellinore assigning him the vague dates of ‘1066 to 1216’ [Once and Future King 1996 edition, pg. 207]. It’s as though the entire English Middle Ages had been poured into a bowl, and T.H. White has helped himself to any aspect of it that pleases him.

          Fortunately this queer displacement in time is nicely explained in one edition of the novel. At the beginning of the story Sir Ector and Sir Grummore sit discussing Eton college over a bottle of Port, the writer helpfully adding:

‘It was not really Eton that he mentioned, for the College of the Blessed Mary was not founded until 1440, but it was a place of the same sort. Also they were drinking Metheglyn, not Port, but by mentioning the modern wine it is easier to give you the feel.’ [Once and Future King 1996 edition, pg. 4].

This is a helpful justification by the writer, and explains away most of the anachronistic nature of the book (while the backwards nature of Merlyn’s existence provides a rather more comedic excuse for everything that particular character says and does). This short paragraph we’re on, however, brings up one of the stranger issues that I have with this book. One I have never properly encountered before in a work of fiction. The fact that this explanatory passage appears in one of two different editions that are still in circulation.

This is the edition I read. The cover's quite nice

          T.H. White published his original novel about Arthur’s childhood, The Sword in the Stone, in 1938. Having spent the following years writing about subsequent events and refining his concept, he then published the large 4-part epic The Once and Future King in 1958, of which the Sword in the Stone formed the first part. He must have spent some twenty years tweaking the ideas since he originally published his earlier book, for the version of the story from The Once and Future King has numerous differences from its predecessor, including – but by no means limited to – the aforementioned passage explaining away the oddly anachronistic setting. Whole chapters have been changed, events and story-arcs which appeared in the 1938 edition have been removed and replaced, and subtle alterations in narration and dialogue creep in all over the place. Chapters 11 and 12, for instance, in which the Wart and Kay join forces with Robin Hood to mount a rescue operation, are markedly different in each edition. In 1938 they have to ambush a swarm of grotesque man-eating creatures called Anthropophagi and slaughter every last one of them. In 1958 they must instead break into Castle Chariot and confront Morgan le Fay and her pet Griffin. In both cases they have to rescue the same prisoners.

Other chapters have not just been edited, but were completely rewritten. Whereas in the earlier edition the Wart has adventures in which he is transformed into a grass snake, meets the goddess Athena, and enters a giant’s stronghold to rescue King Pellinore, these sections have been entirely done away with during the book’s incorporation into The Once and Future King. They are instead replaced with a dystopian chapter as an ant, and an extended sequence where the Wart pisses around as a goose. The thing is, that these differences in the writing are not just part of a fascinating curio left over from an earlier edition of the story. It’s not just a stage on the road of publication towards the book we all know and love. Both versions of The Sword in the Stone are still being reprinted and published, the one from 1938, and the version that’s part of The Once and Future King, and it means that you kind of have to know which one you’re reading before you read it.

The Disney movie (1963). Watch it; it's quite all right.

So this raises the issue of how much control an author has over their own work. There is a significant casualty from T.H. White’s re-editing process, one who might upset fans of the 1963 Disney movie based on The Sword in the Stone: the cannibalistic witch Madam Mim. This sequence forms a substantial part of chapter 6, involving Wart and Kay losing an arrow, and in the process of retrieving it from an isolated cottage in the woods they end up captured by the evil witch Madam Mim, locked away in oversized rabbit-hutches, only to be rescued by Merlin who defeats the witch in a duel. In The Once and Future King however chapter 6 is truncated at the moment the boys lose their arrow, and Madam Mim makes no appearance in the book. T.H. White had clearly decided by 1958 that she was extraneous to the tale he wanted to tell, essentially subjecting the poor cannibal to a damnatio memoriae. If we accept the author’s later version as the ‘correct’ and final edition of the story, then it would mean losing Mim, it would mean losing a boring chapter about a snake, and it would mean having Morgan le Fay rather than a worrying and potentially xenophobic slaughter of some creatures whose species is nearly unpronounceable.

This is a goose, like the one what Wart is turned into

By this point I feel lost and confused myself. The fact of the matter is that a text is not entirely ‘locked’ or ‘static’, and should a living writer wish to come in at a stage post-publication and alter a work to reflect changed circumstances or opinions, or if they felt the original did not accurately reflect their intentions at the time, then we as readers might have to wrestle with that most dangerous concept – *authorial intent*. Or perhaps not, because do we really have to give a damn what the author wanted? When it comes to things like The Hobbit, Tolkien’s revision of the character of Gollum to bring the book more into line with its sequel The Lord of the Rings is now unanimously accepted as the standard work, and it would be unusual to find a re-print of an earlier edition lying around or on sale at your local Waterstones. With The Sword in the Stone however the matter is completely different. The previous edition, before T.H. White’s revisions, is still very much in circulation, and as this is the one which the Disney movie is based on I daresay it is probably just as well known as the 1958 version – if not more so.

As this review has already rambled on for quite a while it would be foolish for me to tackle the remaining parts of The Once and Future King, and so I will not delve any further into it at this time and just stick with my review of The Sword in the Stone. If I had to pick a preference between the two editions then it would probably be The Once and Future King version, because I like having Morgan le Fay instead of those most-questionable Anthropophagi, and I don’t think the loss of an ant chapter for one on snakes and evolutionary biology is really much of a trade-off. I do miss Madam Mim, however, as that is a relatively good scene and chapter 6 is fairly pointless without it.

All in all though, the novel holds together thanks to its own merits. It is a shameless love-letter to an idealised Medieval England, populated by fine characters and wacky sorcery, lost in its own anachronistically cobbled-together setting and occasionally displaying some of the most beautiful writing you might ever read. Seriously, at odd moments I could be convinced I had before me one of the greatest books ever written, but sadly T.H. White cannot keep up such a high standard of writing for the entire length of the novel. Certain episodes in the story are memorable and glorious, such as the boar-hunt, while a few are tedious and tend to dull one’s enthusiasm. Some of the animal chapters, for instance. The ‘sword in the stone’ scene itself, that quintessential Arthurian moment, is actually quite good, for it proves a satisfying finale for the whole affair and gives the book its absolute justification for being the way it is. Again, T.H. White could really put his words together when he set his mind to it. 

I will read the remainder of The Once and Future King in at a later date, assuming the assassins do not get me before then, but for now The Sword in the Stone has been dealt with. It is rather unique a work of art, and is well worth a read if only because it is such a strange literary concoction.

Bibliostone

White, T.H. The Sword in the Stone. Fontana Lions: London. (1971 [First published 1938])

White, T.H. The Once and Future King – The Complete Edition. HarperCollins: London. (1996 [First published 1958])